Workshop 

Prototyping Library Futures Through Artist-Led Experimental Practices

How can arts-based experimental methods help libraries embody new futures, generate possibilities, and create pathways to action? Ana Tiquia (State Library Victoria) and Yoyo Munk (artist-scientist) share how SLV LAB — State Library Victoria’s digital prototyping and innovation lab — has been working with artists, technologists and researchers to open access to the Library’s collections, data and spaces.

In this interactive session, participants will learn about SLV LAB and how the lab approaches prototyping and artist-led inquiry. Workshop participants will also have an opportunity to experience In Memory | Of Being – a site-specific, responsive, mixed-reality artwork created by Yoyo Munk. This ground-breaking work melds photography and audio from the Library’s collection with library architecture, embodying a prototype for spatial forms of collection discovery and navigation.

These presentations will be followed by a series of prototyping exercises for participants to workshop ways they might apply arts-based, experimental approaches within their own library contexts. 

Host

Ana Tiquia is Head of Digital Strategy, Research & Insights at State Library Victoria. With a background as a futurist, strategist, artist and cultural producer, Ana has worked at the intersections of art, technology, design and research for over 15 years in the UK and Australia including with Somerset House, the Barbican, Melbourne Museum and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. In their role at State Library Victoria, Ana launched SLV LAB – the Library’s digital prototyping and innovation hub, and the Creative Technologist-in-Residence program. Ana is passionate about working creatively and critically with advanced technology and data in the cultural sector, and public participation in future imagining.

Yoyo Munk is a scientist and artist working primarily within the medium of headset-based mixed reality. Their work centres on themes of permanence and fragility as well as individual and collective ways of being, drawing from their background as an insect biologist and vision scientist. Their work has been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Pioneer Works (NYC), The Shed (NYC), and most recently State Library Victoria (Melbourne).