ANAT

29/08/2026

NOW CALLING for applications to the 2027 ANAT Synapse residency program. ANAT welcomes submissions from Australian artists who work in any genre with conceptual aims that intersect and deeply engage with science and/or technology.

The program brings artists and researchers together in partnerships that generate new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial beyond both fields. A distinguishing feature of the residencies is their creative research focus, with applicants supported in collaborative experimentation rather than anticipating or producing specific outcomes.

READ more details via 🔗 in our BIO

KEY DATES:
Deadline :: 3 pm (ACDT), Wednesday 14 October 2026
Notification :: Late November 2026
Residency :: Between February – October 2027

The featured imagery offers a glimpse into the research of our 2026 ANAT Synapse resident, composer Elissa Goodrich, who, in collaboration with Professor Richard Manasseh and the fluid dynamics team at Swinburne University of Technology, is investigating how bubbles can tell stories of turbulence, transformation and connection. Revealing how bubbles formed by breaking waves play a major role in absorbing some of humanity's CO₂ emissions.

The sound piece “More: bubbles, microplastics and waves” is also by Elissa Goodrich. See comments for more details.

Image: 2026 ANAT Synapse resident Elissa Goodrich, ‘Underwater image original anon under cc’, visual editing by Elissa Goodrich and Michael Carmody from ‘Waves and Bubbles’ by Elissa Goodrich 2025.

.australia .swinburne

26/08/2026

Recorded in 1999, this archival footage documents the nervous_objects collective as they worked together to realise terra_nova, an ambitious experiment in networked media, environmental data and collaborative online art. The project emerged from connections formed at the 1997 ANAT National Summer School in Hobart.

Twenty-seven years on, the collective now shares their reconstruction of the work for modern browsers and phones, reconnected once again to live weather data from the site where it began. It's a wonderful reminder of the long and ongoing trajectories of artist-led digital practice in this country, and of the relationships that ANAT's programs continue to generate decades on.

READ the feature via 🔗 in our BIO

nervous_objects are: Joyce Hinterding, Cam Merton, Glen O’Malley, Damian Castaldi, Free the Radical, Leesa Willan, Rick Vermey, Anne Robertson, Lisa Burnett and Anita Kocsis.

Imagery: nervous_objects at work, terra_nova, Pekina, 1999

.australia

23/08/2026

"I usually work collaboratively and this collaborative work has been most beneficial to pushing boundaries and letting go of individualism and the pressures of imagining that we are alone in competitive cannibalising colonial systems of power."

Ali Gumillya Baker, our August Q&A guest, responds to the question, how do you see your work contributing to new ways of thinking or creating in the world?

"When I think about what is most important and about significant boundaries that we would like to transgress it is the intersection of change and what has been silenced. There are many knowledges humans have learned and forgotten there are many things that are superficial and unnecessary. "

READ the feature via 🔗 in our BIO

Ali Gumillya Baker is a Mirning person living on Kaurna Yarta who was raised amongst the Nunga community in Adelaide. Ali's creative work and research praxis is interdisciplinary at its core, reflecting the way First Nations knowledges span across all of the disciplinary frameworks that arrived with colonialism. These knowledges have also been (and in some cases continue to be) excluded from disciplinary teaching in many sites of research and learning across the countries now called Australia.

Images: 1. Unbound Collective, 2018, Sovereign Acts III REFUSE, commissioned by Vitalstatistix, for Climate Century, performed at Harts Mill, Yarta Puulti, with collaborators Katlin Inawanji Morrison, Dr. Lou Bennett & Bonny Brodie, image Tony Kearney. 2. Ali Gumillya Baker, image courtesy Vitalstatstix. 3. Unbound Collective, 2015, Sovereign Acts, Act I, commissioned by TARNANTHI and FUMA, performed between The State Library of South Australia and The South Australian Museum, with additional funding from the Australia Council. Image Steve Rendoulis.

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.australia

21/08/2026

Festival of Dangerous Ideas :: Taking over Sydney this August, gathering the world's most compelling thinkers, artists and provocateurs, across 13 iconic venues, for 10 days of talks, films, art, excursions and more.

Festival of Dangerous Ideas takes over Sydney 20-30 August 2026, presented by The Ethics Centre.

19/08/2026

Today, on 🌏 World Photography Day, we're celebrating the work of Australian photographer, activist and alumnus Leila Jeffreys.

Working at the intersection of art, science and conservation, Leila's remarkable portraits of birds invite us to look closer at the intelligence, beauty and vulnerability of the more-than-human world.

Created in collaboration with ornithologists, wildlife carers and conservation organisations, her practice reveals photography's power to deepen our understanding of the natural world and inspire care through connection.

In the featured video Leila and her collaborator created the monumentally immersive installation 'Nest' for Vivid Sydney 2024

Leila says the large scale work is "a halo of light and movement that celebrates the Australian Brolga and their beautiful courtship dance."

Nest, Stargazers Lawn, Barangaroo, Sydney 24 May - 15 June 2024

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thanks team, cinematographer and bird trainers Ravi and Alex from who worked for months with the most beautiful birds, including the rescued Miss Brolga. ⁣⁣ ⁣
⁣⁣Composer , and ⁣⁣ ⁣
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⁣⁣ ⁣ .australia CreateSA

16/08/2026

terra_nova :: the source has changed but the signal remains

Artists from the nervous_objects collective have rebuilt terra_nova, their pioneering 1999 online artwork originally developed after members met through the 1997 ANAT National Summer School.

First realised in Pekina, South Australia, terra_nova used live weather data to drive an online media environment of sound, image, video and text. Twenty-seven years later, the work has been reconstructed for modern browsers and mobile phones, reconnecting this early experiment with live weather data from the same location where the project originated.

READ the feature via 🔗 in our BIO

For nervous_objects, the rebuild is an act of media archaeology: a way of keeping a fragile historical digital artwork alive without flattening the conditions that made it strange, local and experimental in the first place.

nervous_objects are: Joyce Hinterding, Cam Merton, Glen O’Malley, Damian Castaldi, Free the Radical, Leesa Willan, Rick Vermey, Anne Robertson, Lisa Burnett and Anita Kocsis.

Images: terra_nova, Photographs, nervous_objects

.australia

13/08/2026

🎵 How does the behaviour of bubbles become a musical composition?

This sound excerpt features the quartet of musicians Elissa Goodrich is working with during her 2026 ANAT Synapse residency to develop new compositional and sound art ideas: Gideon Brazil on woodwinds, Elliott Folvig on electric guitar, Miranda Hill on double bass, and Elissa on vibraphone.

Together they are exploring the original musical notations Elissa is creating and testing, drawing inspiration from the scientists’ research, Elissa's laboratory observations of bubbles and bubble curtains in wave tanks, and her ongoing practice as a composer, sound artist and percussionist.

As you listen, are you hearing a soundtrack to the physical world that inspired the work, the movement of bubbles, water and turbulence? Or something more abstract, the curiosity, discovery and sense of wonder that surrounds scientific research? Or perhaps, a combination of these?

READ Elissa's Creative Research Journal 🔗 link in BIO

ANAT is calling for applications to the 2027 ANAT Synapse residency program. We welcome submissions from Australian artists who work in any genre with a focus on concepts that intersect and deeply engage with science and/or technology.
DETAILS via 🔗 link in BIO

The excerpt includes a portion of a composition Elissa created earlier this year, within her ANAT Synapse residency, that recently premiered as part of FLOW at the EU General Assembly of Geo Sciences. Once again, bubbles, water flows and turbulence are central to the music composition and its notation.

Image: Elissa Goodrich, photograph Lea Kivivali.

.swinburne .australia

09/08/2026

And if I can have a fan moment: it would be with cultural anthropologist Wade Davis, who said:
“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit”.
Charlotta "Lotta" Oberg, ANAT's July Q&A guest

Lotta is responding to the question... Who would be your dream collaborator and what would you want to create together?

READ the feature via 🔗 in our BIO

Charlotta “Lotta” Oberg is Program Director of the Asialink Leaders Program, Australia’s flagship initiative for building Asia-capable leadership. Originally from Sweden, her journey across five continents eventually led her to Sydney, where she lives, works and learns on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

.australia

07/08/2026

We're looking to borrow or connect with anyone who has access to an infrared camera and a 360°/ambisonic microphone to support the development of 'The Darkness', the 2026 ANAT + MAP mima Residency & Commission.

Bringing together Gamilaraay astrophysicist Peter Swanton, Iranian multidisciplinary artist Prita Tina Yeganeh and Mardigan and Anglo-Celtic artist Georgia Hayward, The Darkness explores light pollution, the disappearance of dark skies, and our changing relationships with the night.

Infrared camera – The trio are hoping to capture imagery in the infrared spectrum.
360° microphone – And looking to record high-quality immersive (360°/ambisonic) audio.

If you have access to this equipment, or know someone who might, we’d be incredibly grateful for your advice, connections or a share.

Please DM us or email [email protected]

Lake Mac Arts

06/08/2026

NOW CALLING for applications to the 2027 ANAT Synapse residency program. ANAT welcomes submissions from Australian artists who work in any genre with conceptual aims that intersect and deeply engage with science and/or technology.

The program brings artists and researchers together in partnerships that generate new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial beyond both fields. A distinguishing feature of the residencies is their creative research focus, with applicants supported in collaborative experimentation rather than anticipating or producing specific outcomes.

READ more details via 🔗 in our BIO

KEY DATES:
Deadline :: 3 pm (ACDT), Wednesday 14 October 2026
Notification :: Late November 2026
Residency :: Between February – October 2027
The featured imagery offers a glimpse into the research of our 2026 ANAT Synapse resident, composer Elissa Goodrich, who, in collaboration with Professor Richard Manasseh and the fluid dynamics team at Swinburne University of Technology, is investigating how bubbles can tell stories of turbulence, transformation and connection. Revealing how bubbles formed by breaking waves play a major role in absorbing some of humanity's CO₂ emissions.

Image: 2026 ANAT Synapse resident Elissa Goodrich. Bubble Notation by Elissa Goodrich, visual editing by Michael Carmody for Waves and Bubbles by Elissa Goodrich 2025.

.australia .swinburne