SPARKS
Short Presentations of Artworks & Research for the Kindred Spirit
Sponsored by SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Committee (DAC)
Interabilities in 21st Century Arts & Technology
Moderated by: James Hullick and Melentie Pandilovski
Melbourne, Australia Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 11:00 am AEDT
New York, USA Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 7:00 pm EST
Los Angeles, USA Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 4:00 pm PST
Beijing, China Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 8:00 am CST
Deadline: February 2, 2026
This SPARKS session focuses on speakers who are neurodiverse artists. The key point of the session is to encourage further dialogue and multidimensional input into public and academic discourse around interatbilities, arts and technology. We are entering an age where accessibility for people for all abilities is essential to the productivity and identities of contemporary pluralist societies. Art and technology are essential in this development as society, culture and technology co-constitute each other. We are already building accessible societies. Therefore, how do we responsibly lay the foundations for the better versions of our accessible cultures and societies? Within the core of this SPARKS session are at least two concepts that seem to be rather misunderstood. Those terms are: – interabilities (the collaboration of people with different abilities) – prosthesis (technology that extends human abilities). The value of artists in this paradigm is high and essential, as it tends to be the creative thinkers who understand the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’.
James Hullick’s creations are concerned with questions of our collective social life drawn from his work with community artists. Since 2006, he has worked with The Amplified Elephants – an ensemble for artists with intellectual disabilities.
A community worker, published researcher and artistic director of JOLT Arts and the BOLT Ensemble, James is an Australia Council for the Arts Creative Fellow 2015 and Michael Harvey Piano Scholar 2016. Through JOLT, James has co-directed large sonic events and festivals locally and in Asia, Europe and the US.
From the outside looking in, James’ creativity seems boundless, manifesting sound worlds from inventive machines, electronics, acoustic instruments, found objects, the human voice, sonic ensembles and the uncanny mergings of these things.
Dr Melentie Pandilovski is an Artistic Director who has curated over 200 projects. His roles include: Creative Producer at JOLT Arts in Melbourne, Australia; Director of Riddoch Art Gallery; Director of Video Pool Media Arts Centre; Director/Curator of SEAFair.
He was Editor of Art in the Biotech Era; Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser’s Communication and Aesthetic Theories Revisited. He published Perspectives on Living and Thinking Vectors of the Anthropocene, Found Sci; Arts & Science – the Intersection (re)engineered in: Wiley Blackwell; The Phenomenology of (Non)Habitual Spaces for the Bioarts in Catalyst Book Series (2017).
