This October 3–12, the Signals Creative Tech Expo returns to Vancouver, showcasing more than 30 projects that range from immersive storytelling to speculative design, experimental games, and AI-driven art.
Presented by DigiBC in partnership with the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), this annual celebration of future-forward storytelling has become a flagship event for B.C.’s creative technology community, and a welcoming space for anyone curious about the spaces where art and technology intersect.
“Signals is a living example of what DigiBC stands for,” says Loc Dao, Executive Director of DigiBC. “We’re here to champion the creators and innovators who are pushing technology forward – not away from human connection, but toward it.”
The main hub for Signals will be the same as years past: the DigiBC Creative Tech Studio at 577 Great Northern Way, Emily Carr University at the Centre for Digital Media. However, this year, Signals has expanded to include musical performances at Signals After Hours, and immersive films at The Dome at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, encouraging visitors to explore the city while discovering new ideas in XR, interactive installations, and live performance.
This year’s curatorial theme, “Lightning Stories & Collective Dreams” explores how technology can deepen our sense of place and community in a time of rapid change. Programming weaves together themes of home, identity, and our evolving relationship with the natural and digital realms – and reminds us of the crucial role that storytellers play in times of uncertainty. The works on display reflect questions many of us share right now: how do we stay connected to culture and history as digital tools reshape our world? How can emerging technologies strengthen, rather than fragment, our relationships?
Plus, what sets Signals apart from other art shows is the way it invites participation. Rather than simply viewing pieces at a distance, visitors are asked to wander right inside immersive and playful artworks, such as SheManShe by Zachery C. Longboy. Or, to actively contribute to works created collectively in real time – ReVerie by Pinyao Liu & Keon Lee and A Walled City by Weidi Zhang and Rodger [Jieliang] Luo). And much more (see below).
It’s an environment where artists, technologists, and audiences meet as collaborators, and where the boundaries between spectator and creator naturally blur. “What excites me most about Signals is seeing artists and technologists explore what’s possible. Their projects remind us that technology can be playful, surprising, and deeply human,” says Dao.
Read on to learn more about the artists and exhibitions of Signals 2025.
Storytellers, Boundary-Pushers, and Future Shapers: Meet the Artists of Signals
Zachery Cameron Longboy – SHEMANSHE
With a career spanning more than three decades, Zachery C. Longboy is a Sayisi Dene video, performance, and installation artist from Churchill, Manitoba, whose work explores identity and resilience. Adopted into a non-Indigenous family and living as a Two-Spirited, HIV-positive man, he places these intersecting experiences at the center of his art. Over a three-decade career his pieces have appeared in major collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. SHEMANSHE, his first immersive installation, invites visitors into a layered encounter with land, memory, and spirit, extending his signature blend of personal narrative and experimental video.
Weidi Zhang & Jieliang (Rodger) Luo – A Walled City
Based in Los Angeles, Weidi Zhang creates immersive art with artificial intelligence at its core, exploring how technology can hold and reshape memory. Her collaborator Jieliang (Rodger) Luo, a Singapore-based scientist and entrepreneur, develops creative AI tools and once led research at Autodesk. Together, they’ll be presenting A Walled City, an interactive installation where an AI system constructs a virtual metropolis in real time, based on Hong Kong’s bygone Kowloon Walled City. During the exhibition, participants upload personal images, which the system transforms into unique chambers that join the ever-growing digital city.
Pinyao Liu & Keon Ju Maverick Lee – ReVerie
Pinyao Liu, an artist-researcher working between Linz and Vancouver, blends dream science with digital art to examine the subconscious. Partnering with percussionist and AI-music PhD student Keon Ju Maverick Lee, Liu has crafted ReVerie, where whispered dream recollections transform into a shifting 3D landscape that visitors can explore like a living dream.
Milan Koerner-Safrata (SCRNPRNT) – Stellations
Vancouver-born Milan Koerner-Safrata co-founded the interactive studio SCRNPRNT and experiments with how video games can express complex ideas. His project Stellations turns gameplay itself into the subject, sending players through looping circuits that echo the habits and patterns we fall into – and sometimes escape.
Eyez Mingtong Li – TamagotchU
Montreal artist Eyez Mingtong Li works at the intersection of film, gaming, and extended reality, creating interactive worlds that question the line between human and machine. In TamagotchU, an AI creature responds to the audience’s real-time facial expressions and sounds, building a shared personality while running on low-energy, community-friendly technology.
Youhan Guan – Rewind
Originally from China and now based in Canada, Youhan Guan combines design, coding, and storytelling to create immersive digital experiences. Rewind offers a quiet VR journalling space where participants record thoughts onto virtual cassette tapes and revisit them, blending analog nostalgia with a deeply personal digital environment.
Mel-lif-lu-ous (a.k.a. Lara Kroeker) – Wildroot & Amber
Lara Kroeker, a classically trained violinist and sound artist, draws on recent residencies in Japan and Iceland to create her brand of atmospheric, experimental music. Wildroot & Amber is a five-song installation where glass apothecary jars open to release voices and field recordings, weaving memory into live performance.
IM4 Media Lab Collective – Imagining Good Futures: Thunderbird Dreams
Founded in 2018 by award-winning filmmaker Loretta Todd, the IM4 Media Lab is an Indigenous-led centre in Vancouver dedicated to advancing immersive media while upholding cultural protocols and community governance. The lab is known for free, accessible training programs, including the world’s first Indigenous Virtual Production Micro-Credential, and for building pathways for Indigenous creators to shape the future of digital storytelling.Their collaborative piece, Imaging Good Futures: Thunderbird Dreams, brings youth and Elders together in an interactive mural of sound, light, and storytelling that celebrates Indigenous creativity and community.
Soft Rains – Ambrosia Sky
The team behind Soft Rains, a group of veteran indie and AAA game developers, specializes in building richly detailed, story-driven worlds. In Ambrosia Sky, players travel to Saturn’s outer rings to confront a mysterious alien contamination, combining first-person action with meditative exploration.
Matthew Biederman – Situational Compliance
Montreal-based Matthew Biederman has spent decades creating installations and performances that reveal how technology shapes perception and society. His work Situational Conformity turns a childhood game into a sharp look at surveillance: an AI issues commands while tracking players’ movements, raising questions about control and compliance.
Navid & Vassiliki Khonsari – Lili
Husband-and-wife team Navid and Vassiliki Khonsari are the co-founders of iNK Stories, a New York–based studio recognized for pushing the boundaries of narrative-driven games and interactive media. Navid, an Iranian-born writer and director, helped shape cinematic storytelling in major titles such as Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil. Vassiliki, a producer and visual anthropologist, has created cross-platform experiences honored by BAFTA,META, and more. Their latest, Lili, is a neo-noir interactive adaptation of Macbeth set in Iran, where players navigate ambition, hacking, and government surveillance.
Pegah Tabassinejad – Entropic Fields of Displacement
Artist and educator Pegah Tabassinejad, originally from Iran, creates video installations and performances focused on identity, movement, and surveillance culture. Here practice revolves around the construction of digital and live performances, film, video installations and city projects. At Signals, she’ll be presenting Entropic Fields of Displacement, an eight-channel work that follows women and marginalized gendered individuals across West Asia and Europe, turning their everyday walks into powerful reflections on migration and resilience.
Edward Madojemu – Fading Places
Edward Madojemu, a technical artist and storyteller with credits that include Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, moves fluidly between comics, animation, and extended reality, centres his practice on independent digital media creation and afrocentric experiences. Written and illustrated by a team of local artists, his interactive graphic novel Fading Places imagines the city of Vancouver in the wake of an otherworldly storm that transforms its buildings into surreal, sentient spaces, inviting viewers to uncover hidden stories through animation and augmented reality.
Casey Koyczan / Sidii Media – Ełeghàà ; All At Once
Casey Koyczan is a Tłı̨chǫ Dene interdisciplinary artist originally from Yellowknife, now based in Winnipeg. He works across many forms – 3D animation, VR/AR, sound, installation, sculpture, and graphic design – often combining traditional Indigenous materials or ideas with new digital tools. His short film Ełeghàà ; All At Once moves across overlapping timelines of Denendeh – from ancient landscapes with giant animals to orbital habitats of the future – blending legend and science fiction into one sweeping vision.
Kayla Briët – Ways of Knowing
Kayla Briët is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work blends film, music, and virtual reality to share stories of belonging and cultural memory. Of Taiwanese-Chinese, Dutch-Indonesian, and African-American heritage, and an enrolled citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation through her father, she focuses on amplifying voices often left unheard. Her project Ways of Knowing, created with Diné community members, activists, and storytellers, explores the Navajo Nation’s enduring encounter with uranium mining. The immersive film reframes nuclear dialogue from fear to resilience.
Noah Miller – Echoes of Me
Noah Miller is an experience designer and PhD researcher who merges programming, motion capture, and immersive storytelling to support mental well-being and personal growth. Drawing on his interdisciplinary background and his own neurodiverse perspective, he creates VR projects that invite deep reflection. His work Echoes of Me is a guided XR encounter where participants engage in an intimate dialogue with themselves. Inspired by research on self-compassion and perspective-taking, the piece uses virtual embodiment to help visitors pause, reflect, and see themselves with fresh eyes.
LBN Media – Rift x Voxelite
LBN Media Collective is a student collective hailing from Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media:
▶ Janelle Hinesley, Project Manager, Creative Lead
▶ Claire Wang, Technical Artist, Tech Lead
▶ Alicia Rui, Technical Artist, Game Developer
▶ Jiaqi Jing, Technical Artist, 3D Artist
▶ Wendy Lin, 3D Animation Lead, Layout Artist
▶ Zoe (Wentao) Sun, UX/UI Designer, Graphic Designer
Get Your Exhibition Tickets Now
Reserve your spot to explore more than 30 immersive installations, performances, and interactive works at Signals 2025!