Georgia Tech Arts presents an online panel discussion created by New York Live Arts, featuring four New York-based movement artists in a conversation moderated by Georgia Tech faculty, Yanni Loukissas.

Artists have always pushed the boundaries of what technology can do, whether it’s exploring hybrid ways of experiencing performance, redirecting perception, interrogating narratives and barriers, or questioning technology itself. In this conversation, LaJuné McMillian, Brandon Powers, and Heidi Boisvert & Kat Mustatea will give brief presentations on their work in unique perspectives. The moderator, Yanni Loukissas, is an associate professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where he directs the Local Data Design Lab. His research is focused on helping creative people think critically about the social implications of emerging technologies.

LaJuné McMillian

LaJuné is a Multidisciplinary Artist and Educator creating art that integrates performance, extended reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. They are passionate about discovering, learning, manifesting, and stewarding spaces for liberated Black Realities and the Black Imagination. LaJuné believes in making by diving into, navigating, critiquing, and breaking systems and technologies that uphold systemic injustices to decommodify our bodies, undo our indoctrination, and make room for different ways of being.

LaJuné has had the opportunity to show and speak about their work at Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Leaders in Software and Art, Creative Tech Week, and Art & Code’s Weird Reality. LaJuné was previously the Director of Skating at Figure Skating in Harlem, where they integrated STEAM and Figure Skating to teach girls of color about movement and technology. They have continued their research on Blackness, movement, and technology during residencies and fellowships at the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, NYU ITP, Barbarian Group, and Barnard College.

Brandon Powers

Brandon Powers is a creative director + choreographer who creates experiences across physical and virtual space. His work focuses on capturing liveness in the digital, building interdisciplinary communities, and shifting culture towards a more embodied future. Brandon’s key projects include VR saga Queerskins: ARK (Venice International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Cannes XR), for which he created interactive volumetric choreography, and Frankenstein AI (Sundance Film Festival), an AI-powered immersive installation and performance. Through these experiences, he harnessed his knowledge as a movement practitioner to devise Embodiment Design, a methodology for designing more human-centered XR experiences. On TikTok, Brandon has built a community of over 50,000, sharing his process and tips for becoming a creative professional. Brandon is a NEW INC member and associate producer at Musical Theatre Factory where he launched MTFxR, a program supporting XR musicals. He has spoken on the intersection of arts and technology at Creative Tech Week, the TCG National Conference, Verizon’s 5G Lab, Lincoln Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Kat Mustatea

Kat Mustatea is a transmedia playwright whose language and performance works enlist absurdity, hybridity, and the uncanny to dig deeply into what it means to be human. Her recent work, Voidopolis, won the Arts and Letters Unclassifiable Prize for literature and the Dante Prize for art, and was exhibited internationally, including at Ars Electronica, in the form of an AR book. Her TED talk, about puppets and algorithms, unpacks the meaning of machines making art.

Heidi Boisvert

Heidi Boisvert (PhD) is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist, and academic researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. She founded futurePerfect lab, a creative agency and think-tank, and is working with David Byrne on Theater of the Mind, a new immersive theater piece. Boisvert is an Assistant Professor of AI and the Arts in the College of the Arts School of Theatre + Dance at the University of Florida.