Hello Friends,
Here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months!

I am excited to share recent and upcoming exhibitions. Details of Synthetic Narratives, a major symposium on AI and XR media that I co-directed. News on my art collective, Blockbusters at the Museum of the Moving Image, and an essay I published on the animistic lineages of motion capture in Millennium Film Journal.

THIS FRIDAY: Honey Fungus in New York!
Honey Fungus will be on view in New York this Friday as part of Neuromantics, a one day event curated by Danielle Patterson & UAAD. The event transforms a Soho loft into a playable ecosystem of artist made games, XR journeys, and live audiovisual works, running from 4 pm to 11 pm at 393 Broadway. Inspired by the networked logic of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
Tickets: https://posh.vip/e/neuromantics

Exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art
Honey Fungus is currently on exhibition as part of Serendipitous Inspirations at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, a three person exhibition running from October through December 2025. The exhibition brings together immersive media works that reflect moments of creative transformation and reorientation. Curated by Ellen Kuo.
https://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/en/

Honey Fungus on Tour
Honey Fungus continues to screen internationally. In November it had its European premiere at the 30th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. It also received official selections at John Waters’ Maryland Film Festival, Open World Animation Festival, VR Fest Mexico City, and the Miami Tech Summit Immersive Festival at Art Basel. The project will be shown at the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival in San Francisco this coming April and was awarded Best Virtual Reality Project by Digital Arts Zurich.

Millennium Film Journal Publication
My article Digital Puppetry and the Animistic Lineage of Motion Capture appears in the new issue of Millennium Film Journal.
https://millenniumfilmjournal.com/

It explores how motion capture and digital avatars extend a much older story about animation, belief, and our relationship to the non-human. I am thinking through how the impulse to make images move connects to ancient practices of puppetry and ritual, and how the tools we use to simulate life expose the strange overlap between technology, labour, and myth. It looks at other artists who are using high-fidelity digital avatars in their work and asks what it means to puppeteer images conjured by global technocapitalist networks.

Synthetic Narratives Symposium
In October, my colleague Christopher Manzione and I directed Synthetic Narratives, a two day symposium at Stevens Institute of Technology exploring how AI and immersive media are reshaping narrative storytelling and artist film. The event brought together artists, filmmakers, technologists, and philosophers for an exhibition, panel discussions, and a film screening programme.

Putting together this symposium was a major milestone for me. Not long ago I was teaching myself immersive worldbuilding in my studio and now, I was welcoming some of the most exciting artists and thinkers in the field to chew through the cultural ramifications of these technologies. We showed 11 new media works, held four chaired panels. Philosopher David Chalmers delivered a great keynote unpacking large language models, thought, and consciousness via the TV Show Severance. We have created a comprehensive archive on the website and intend to continue with additional iterations soon.
www.syntheticnarratives.com

Blockbusters Collective Update
My video art collective, Blockbusters, had a strong season. In September we presented a screening and artist talk at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of Open Worlds 2025. The programme featured works by all eight of us and was followed by a conversation moderated by Rebecca Cleman of Electronic Arts Intermix.
We also produced a limited edition series of hand painted VHS cassettes and launched a two week online screening on Buy.Video, which received coverage in Artnet.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/buy-video-2710185

Recent Press
This season also brought some generous press. Design Observer published a feature titled Dancing with AI: How Next Gen Game Designers Are Taking the Lead, which profiles my work in Honey Fungus and reflects on how the project combines imagination and machine learning.
https://designobserver.com/dancing-with-ai-how-next-gen-game-designers-are-taking-the-lead/

I was also interviewed by the Associated Press and NPR about the role of AI and immersive media in contemporary art and the broader cultural questions these tools raise.

Cookbook Feature
Maybe most importantly, my favourite comfort dish - coconut tofu curry with peas appears in Push Projects’ Community Cookbook, a collection of recipes by artists in the Push Projects community. It is simple, vegan, gluten free, delicious warming and I eat any time I am back from a hike.
https://www.push-projects.com/store-1/push-projects-community-cookbook

Thanks for reading! You’re receiving this because we’re friends, or because we once had a good conversation that stuck with me. I send these notes a few times a year to share what I’ve been up to. If anything here resonates, please say hello. I’d genuinely love to hear what you’re working on.

Warmest,
Jonah