Small data Gen-AI workshop

by | Feb 6, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Graduate, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts, Writing

Training the Muse: A workshop on small data Gen-AI for artistic practices

Generative AI tools have become increasingly visible in artistic practice, however, most artists encounter AI through large-scale corporate platforms trained on massive, opaque datasets. These systems often obscure authorship, flatten aesthetic diversity and embed cultural biases. This workshop offers an alternative approach: a small-data, artist-centred methodology that emphasizes control, transparency, and cultural specificity. Participants will work with their own datasets, gaining creative autonomy while learning ethical and technically accessible AI workflows grounded in personal and situated artistic practice.

Join us February 28-March 1 for a no-cost, two-day workshop on the Autolume software, a visual AI system from SFU’s Metacreation Lab. Led by lab director Philippe Pasquier, participants will craft personal datasets, sculpt custom GANs and explore real‑time generative play, gaining creative control impossible with corporate, large‑scale platforms. Past editions include Toronto, Montréal, Berlin, and online.

Register here to join this growing movement of artists redefining authorship, cultural specificity and artistic agency in AI. Bring your images, your vision and your curiosity! Maximum registration for this workshop is 32. Watch this November 2025 UVic talk with Philippe Pasquier.

This workshop is made possible through the generous support of UVic’s Office of the Vice President Research & Innovation, Kula: Library Futures Academy and the Canada Research Chair in Emergent Digital Art Practices with the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Join us for student wellness day Feb 9

by | Feb 5, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, indigenous, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts, Writing

Feeling stressed or overwhelmed? Need a break between classes? Don’t miss Fine Arts Student Wellness Day, running 8:30am-4:30pm Mon, Feb 9. Everything’s free! Activities and events will be happening around the Fine Arts complex, so drop in for whatever best works for your schedule.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s going on:

Drop-in activities (all day)

  • Wellness Info Fair (Fine Arts lobby)
  • Adult colouring pages (Fine Arts 108)
  • Comedy on loop (Fine Arts 106)
  • DIY puzzles (Fine Arts 115)

Timed activities (various locations)

  • Morning bird walk: 8:30 – 9:30am (Finnerty Gardens)
  • Dog café/pet therapy: 11:15am – 12:30pm (Fine 
Arts 104) with Pacific Animal Therapy Society
  • Nature journaling: 12:30 – 1:30pm (Finnerty Gardens, meet at Multifaith Centre) with Angela Wood
  • Somatic Sanctuary: 1:00 – 1:20pm (Fine Arts 108) 
Qi Gong movement with Catherine Harding
  • Dance/movement session: 1:00 -3pm (Theatre 136) 
with DJ Codex (Christine Walde, Fine Arts Librarian)
  • Art meditation: 1:30 – 4:30pm (Visual Arts 146)
  • Yoga For Meditation: 3:30 – 4:20pm (Multifaith Centre)

Wellness Info Fair (Fine Arts lobby)

  • Healthy snacks table
  • DIY gratitude messages
  • Wellness messages & reminders
  • Office of Student Life info & campus resources

 

Sounding Grounds festival debuts

by | Jan 22, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, Graduate, School of Music, Visual Arts

Sounding Grounds is a gathering of new music, experimental sound and interdisciplinary art. Running Jan 30-Feb 1 at UVic’s School of Music, this multi-day festival is a meeting place for UVic’s most adventurous creators. Featuring student and faculty composers, improvisers, builders, thinkers, and listeners, Sounding Grounds invites you to explore the curious and ever-evolving terrain of contemporary sound.

Schedule of events:

Fridaymusic: New works by student composers

A concert of bold new works by UVic student composers that spans acoustic, electronic and hybrid forms. Expect unexpected sounds!

12:30 – 1:20pm Friday, Jan. 30 • Phillip T. Young Recital Hall • Admission by donation • More info

 

UVic Orchestra: Nobles, Smetana, Schumann

Conductor Yariv Aloni leads the UVic Symphony Orchestra in a dynamic program that journeys through vivid musical landscapes, from operatic drama to symphonic grandeur. Featuring Jordan Nobles’ Apollo—an evocative, contemporary work exploring light and motion.

8pm Friday, Jan. 30 • Farquhar Auditorium, Jamie Cassels Centre • Tickets $15-$28, free for UVic students • More info

 

Sonic Improvisation Workshop

Bring your instrument, voice, or just your curiosity. A low-pressure, high-reward space for spontaneous sonic exploration. No experience necessary.

1:30-3pm Sat, Jan. 31 • room B037, MacLaurin Building • Free • More info

 

Faculty Concert Series: Local Currents

UVic faculty and staff share original works that highlight the depth, range, and individuality of our community’s artistic voices. The program features Anthony Tan’s bound/woven for electronics; a collaborative laptop and video performance by Megan Harton & Isaiah Doyle; Taylor Brook’s Hypha for electric guitar with electronics and video projections; Sarah Belle Reid’s Brittle Stars for voice and electronics; Lauren McCall’s work for flute and electronics; Ajtony Csaba’s Wind Drumming for piano and live electronics; and Kristy Farkas’s In this light for piano.

7:30pm Sat, Jan. 31 • Phillip T. Young Recital Hall • By donation • More info

 

VR Experience: The Witness Blanket

Explore Carey Newman’s powerful national monument through virtual reality. Inspired by a woven blanket, the Witness Blanket is a large-scale work of art. It contains hundreds of items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings and traditional and cultural structures from across Canada. This is a space for listening, remembering, and honouring truth and reconciliation.

2-5pm Sunday, Feb. 1 • CReaTeLab, room B004, MacLaurin Building • More info • Free, but reservations recommended: book a time here

 

Shapes for Sounds Vol. 04 Oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Part gallery, part playground, this annual variety throwdown transforms space through sculpture, sound art, noise, and performance. A tribute to the Merz art movement, the evening brings together action painting, voice, video, power electronics, and embodied performance—exploring the relationships between sound, the body, materials, and architecture. Featuring the Puppets Forsaken troupe: Hermit, Agnes, Alex Taylor-McCallum, Edith Skeard, Kegan McFadden, Ciel Boehme, John Boehme, Paul Walde, Grace Salez, Evan Locke, Mitch Renaud, Derk Wolmuth, and Lesley Marshall.

2-5pm Sunday, Feb. 1 • Phillip T. Young Recital Hall • By donation • More info

Upcoming Indigenous events & workshops

by | Jan 22, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, indigenous, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

Fine Arts Indigenous Resurgence Coordinator Karla Point has been busy organizing her latest series of workshops, lunchtime talks and special guest visits for the Winter semester. Here’s what’s coming up, but more will be added as details get solidified.

Fine Arts Haahuupa Lunch Series

Meaning “to share the teachings” in Nuu chah nulth, the continuing Haahuupa series offers a chance for us to digest some Indigenous knowledge along with our food. Please bring your lunch to these talks, which are free and open to anyone.

Carey Newman (Feb 2) is a multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, master carver and author who strives to highlight Indigenous, social and environmental issues in his artistic practice as he examines the impacts of colonialism and capitalism, harnessing the power of material truth to unearth memory and trigger the necessary emotion to drive positive change. He is UVic’s Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices, and a professor in the Visual Arts and Art History & Visual Studies departments. 

• 12:30-1:30pm Fine Arts room 106: more details here.

Heather Igloliorte (March 24) is an internationally-renowned curator and art historian whose work centres circumpolar Inuit and other Indigenous arts and knowledges within global art contexts (contemporary art exhibitions, public art installations, museum collecting practices, new media art, film productions). She is UVic’s inaugural Canada Research Excellence Chair in Decolonial & Transformational Indigenous Art Practices, and runs the Taqsiqtuut Research-Creation Lab in the Visual Arts department. 

• 12:30-1:30pm in Visual Arts room 134: more details here.

Marion Newman (April 10) is a critically acclaimed and award-winning mezzo-soprano, and a voice professor in the School of Music. A driving force for truth and reconciliation within the context of classical music, she is leading colleagues and audiences through long overdue discussions about the very nature of what it means to call something “Canadian music”. As well as being one of Canada’s most accomplished operatic singers, she is the long-running host of the national CBC Radio show, Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. 

• 12:30-1:30pm in Fine Arts room 106: more details here.

Monthly workshops

Karla’s monthly workshop series is based around three key sessions — REDress: Calls for Justice, Territorial Acknowledgement and Pathways to Reconciliation — which repeat monthly at different times and days to accommodate shifting schedules.

REDress: Calls for Justice workshop: learn more about the REDress movement and the critical ongoing issue of genocide against Indigenous Women & Girls & LGBTQ2S+. Very little progress has been made on achieving the 231 Calls for Justice since the release of the Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women & Girls National Inquiry report in 2019. Learn more about the REDress movement and the critical ongoing issue of genocide against MMIWG2S+ people. All Canadian citizens have a role in addressing this and a responsibility to affect change for those who are suffering through the systemic factors of racism and misogyny. “This report is about these beautiful Indigenous people and the systemic factors that lead to their losses of dignity, humanity and, in too many cases, losses of life. This report is about deliberate race, identity and gender-based genocide,” noted Chief Commissioner Marion Buller, who is now UVic’s Chancellor.

• 9:30-10:30am, Thurs, Jan 29 (Fine Arts 106)

• 11:30am-12:30pm Tuesday, Feb 24 (Fine Arts 106)

• 9:30-10:30am Wed, March 4 (Fine Arts 108)

• 10-11am Tues, April 28 (Fine Arts 106) 

Territorial Acknowledgement workshop: in this age of Reconciliation with Indigenous People, land acknowledgements are a great way to do your reconciliation work. Learn about why land acknowledgements matter not only for Indigenous People, but for you too! You will also get some insights into how to do your own acknowledgements in everyday life.

• 9:30-10:30am Feb 9 (Fine Arts 106)

• 11:30am-12:30pm Thurs, March 12 (Fine Arts 108)

• 2:30-3:30pm Mon, April 13 (Fine Arts 106)

Pathways to Reconciliation workshop: The Truth and Reconciliation Report and its 94 Calls to Action was released in December 2015, and is a detailed account of what happened to Indigenous children who were physically and sexually abused in government boarding schools, where an estimated 3,200 children died from tuberculosis, malnutrition and other diseases resulting from poor living conditions. Chief Justice Murray Sinclair estimates the death toll to be much higher because burial records were “so poor”. The number of deaths due to abuse were likely not recorded.

• 10:30-11:30am Wed, Feb 18 (Fine Arts 106)

• 9:30-10:30am Wed, March 18 (Fine Arts 106)

• 12:30-1:30pm Thurs, April 23 (Fine Arts 106)

Special guests

Coming up this spring are faculty visits by Indigenous artist, educator and ethnobotanist T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss (Feb 25) and Indigenous filmmaker Harold C. Joe (March 24). Watch for more info coming soon!

 

About Karla Point

Karla Point Hii nulth tsa kaa is the Indigenous Resurgence Coordinator for the Faculty of Fine Arts. She guides the Faculty’s responses to the TRC Calls to Action, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and the provincial Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People Action (DRIPA) Plan.

Karla also develops and delivers faculty-wide workshops that gives insights on decolonizing teaching and curriculum, and integrates Indigenous Resurgence initiatives for Fine Arts faculty, staff, students and the UVic community. She consults with Indigenous staff, faculty, local Elders and other knowledge holders when necessary, while also providing support and advocacy for Fine Arts Indigenous Students. Part of the Hesquiaht First Nation, Karla is a life-long learner and UVic alumna with a BA (Humanities, 2003) and LL.B (Law, 2006).

A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Kirk McNally’s new ADCARA role

by | Jan 16, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, News, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

While new hires are a regular part of faculty life, it’s rare that we see the creation of entirely new administrative roles. One of the Faculty highlights of 2025 was the inauguration of two brand-new Associate Dean positions: Associate Dean Indigenous, held by Writing professor Danielle Geller, and Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research and Administration (ADCARA), held by School of Music professor Kirk McNally.

A professional sound engineer, McNally is a familiar face at faculty meetings: he first joined our School of Music in 2006 along with the then-new Music & Computer Science program before being appointed a professor of music technology in 2016; his own research and creative work has been supported by the likes of SSHRC, the Canada Council, the Banff Centre and UVic’s Learning & Teaching Centre, among others. In 2025, McNally was awarded the UVic Provost’s Advocacy & Activism Award in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for his efforts to host a diverse range of musicians and fostering a vibrant learning environment for aspiring sound engineers and producers.

Now, as our inaugural ADCARA, McNally’s role focuses on a number of linked priorities, including,

  • external grants and awards support and advocacy, and strategic positioning of faculty
  • advocacy for Fine Arts via different UVic councils and committees
  • undertaking various strategic initiatives around collaboration, both on and off campus, and
  • graduate student curriculum support and development of new grad student initiatives and collaborations.

Boil it down, and McNally sees the ADCARA position as a means of promoting, supporting and benefiting Fine Arts as a whole.

“It’s about representation within different committees and at different levels, both across the university and at the community level,” he explains. “We’re clearly acknowledged as a Faculty within the university, but we don’t always have a voice to negotiate on specific topics.”

A bridge between worlds

While other faculties on campus have had similar roles for decades now, the ADCARA offers a new opportunity for Fine Arts.

“We haven’t had a role like this before, but I think it will allow people to have less work happening off the side of their desks — especially as the university becomes more of an interdisciplinary place where we work collaboratively across units,” McNally says.

“So, I do a lot around representation and acknowledgement of how research is viewed and defined on campus, including creative activity and creative works . . . . not everyone really understands what we do, how we do it and why it matters both on and off-campus.”

McNally in the CReaTe Lab

Describing the ADCARA role as being “exciting and very stimulating”, McNally feels it’s a logical step for him. “It fits well with my training as a recording engineer, who act as the intermediary between an artist and their audience, and help the audience receive the project in the way the artist intended — you’re like a bridge between two worlds, making connections for a specific outcome. Because of that, I really value opportunities to work across units on interdisciplinary projects . . . it just feels natural to collaborate with different talent while also getting the opportunity to learn about their activities.”

By way of example of how his position can function, McNally points to the November 2025 Science + Art = Actionevent featuring Swiss glaciologist Andreas Linsbauer of the University of Zurich.

“We had the Swiss Embassy approach [Crookes Professor] Sean Holman, who didn’t necessarily have the capacity to quickly organize anything mid-semester, so I was able to assist with making it happen.” As a result, Fine Arts joined with KULA and the Geography department to host an event bridging science, art, technology, education and climate change, attended by representatives from departments across campus. “It would have been very easy to say ‘we’re just too busy right now’, but then we wouldn’t have had this opportunity, and all those people wouldn’t have been in the room. Instead, we were able to showcase Fine Arts research and activity, and advocate for future collaboration.”

2025’s Science + Art = Action event

Giving back and catching up

While his ADCARA duties are in addition to his ongoing role with the School of Music, McNally sees them less as a burden and more as an opportunity.

“This institution has supported my growth and development for the past 20 years, so I see this as one way of giving back towards what’s been a very positive experience for me,” he says. “Before I was hired, for example, there was no CReaTe Lab in Music, but now there’s so much activity in there and that space will continue to grow in the years ahead.”

He also feels the ADCARA position will help better frame Fine Arts for the UVic of the future. “Since I was hired in 2006, we’ve certainly seen an increase in UVic’s profile as a research campus,” he says. “Not having had a role like this until now, we’re playing a lot of catch-up to convince people where we are in research and creative activity. But we’ve done amazing things lately.”

Over the past five years, some of those “amazing things” include the hiring in Visual Arts of Canada Research Chair Joel Ong, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices Heather Igloliorte and the elevation of Carey Newman from the limited term Audain Professor to UVic’s Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices. Meanwhile, the Black Scholar Fund  has enabled Fine Arts to bring in the likes of professors Lauren McCall in Music and Wayde Compton in Writing, while the Indigenous Recruitment Support Fund attracted professors Mique’l Dangeli (AHVS) and Marion Newman (Music). And, as recently as January 2026, we’ve seen Sarah Belle Reid join us as our newest Music technology professor.

But, as McNally points out, “when you’re coming in at those levels, there’s an expectation that there will also be capacity to facilitate activity and support people’s work, so that’s one of the ways this [ADCARA] role will help our faculty.”

Grad student support

Another bullet-point in the ADCARA brief is graduate student curriculum support, and development of new grad student initiatives and collaborations.

“This role will help to lighten the load of our Associate Dean Academic, so they’re not handling both undergrad and grad curriculum,” he says. “I also advocate for our graduate students with the Faculty of Graduate Studies to build greater opportunities and better support in forums where we traditionally had less presence.”

For examples, he points to the annual grad student Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship and our Pacific Opera Victoria partnership. “It’s about finding opportunities when there’s a desire from a specific department, working in concert with them to help get things off the ground.”

Visual Arts grad student Parvin Hasani (left) was the 2025 ONC ArtScience Fellow

Coming up next

Looking ahead to this semester, McNally is particularly excited by the extended visit by Orion Scholar Mike Ananny, a communications and journalism professor with USC.

“He’s a highly respected academic: a former Trudeau Scholar and advisor to the federal Minister of Heritage, he was on the advisory committee for the future of CBC and Radio Canada . . . he’ll be really interesting for people to engage with, especially in this time of cultural sovereignty.”

During his three months in Fine Arts, Ananny will be specifically focused on the use of creative AI and its impacts on the arts, artists and creatives.

“Anyone who’s working with or contemplating creative AI, how it works, how it’s being used, how it’s affecting the sense of artistic self and identity across the creative field,” says McNally. “He’ll be giving a public Orion lecture plus offering curated workshops with our grad students and faculty.”

Planning for the future

Ultimately, McNally feels the ADCARA position nicely aligns with his own research and creative activity.

“The way I helped develop the music and technology program is similar to how the sciences build a lab: using grants to help a group of students work around aligned research objectives. I’ve also engaged with external communities and worked to bring them to campus through events like the Society for Music Production Research conference and the Audio+ series, which allow students to see their futures in the industry. Creating a culture of research is one of the goals of this position, so it’s about both seeing what’s possible and what people can aspire to.”

The Theatre department’s focus on applied theater is a good example of that: an emerging field just 30 years ago, UVic is now seen as a world leader thanks to the work of past professors like Warwick Dobson and Julianna Saxton, and current professors Yasmine Kandil and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta.

A more recent example is Visual Arts professor Heather Igloliorte’s Taqsiqtuut Indigenous Research-Creation Lab. “Look at who she’s brought in during the first year of her CERC position — people are literally coming here from all over the world because they’ve got connections with her and now they know what we’re doing here. This kind of work is driven by relationships and building relationships is one of the things we’re really good at in Fine Arts.”

Opening day for Heather Igloliorte’s  Taqsiquut Research Creation Lab in 2025

Paul Walde exhibit focuses on weather & water

by | Jan 12, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, Faculty, Research, Visual Arts

Opening on January 15 at downtown’s Legacy Gallery is Paul Walde: Weather Conditions, a double exhibit of site-specific video installations by Visual Arts professor Paul Walde, curated by the Art History & Visual Studies department’s Williams Legacy Chair,  Carolyn Butler Palmer. Both these installations reflect art history in unique ways, highlighting remembrances of famed Canadian painter Tom Thomson and American artist Geoff Hendrix, notably of the Fluxus art movement. Walde rarely exhibits locally, so Weather Conditions offers the chance to see his work in a gallery setting — with two pieces that have never before been shown in Victoria.

“This is an opportunity to give the community a taste of the work I’ve been doing in relation to environment, landscape, performance and the human body,” says Walde. “I really wanted to share these works, particularly because they haven’t been seen a lot: they’re both made for audiences, they’re not meant to be scrolled away somewhere.”

On view will be the 55-minute Tom Thomson Centennial Swim (2017-2019) and the 30-minute Of Weather (for Geoff Hendricks) (2018-2024): two video installations which showcase one-time, site-specific performances and both featuring soundtracks for which Walde composed the music himself.

“A lot of my work takes a while to do,” he explains. “It takes a lot to initially stage the events and then to reimagine them into standalone artworks that can operate on their own. You can’t reproduce the live performances, but you can use that raw footage as material to make something new.”

Recent work on view

The Tom Thomson Centennial Swim (shown right) is a bold, real-time video installation of Walde’s 2017 site-specific swim across Canoe Lake in Ontario’s Algonquin Park, where Thomson died, accompanied by a team of synchronized swimmers and a canoe-based brass band, both of which are featured in the video alongside footage shot both from his perspective and from a distance.

Of Weather engages with issues of climate and ecology by featuring people struggling to carry large-scale photographs of clouds, bringing weather down to a very human level. Legacy will also offer two performances (Feb 28 & March 28) where people will handle the images while accompanied by Walde’s live score.

“I would say Tom Thomson is more like me confronting the myth around his death, literally putting my body in that space on the very anniversary of his drowning,” says Walde. By approaching it like a sporting event — with branding, a band and surrounding performances — he also acknowledges some of the competition and the hierarchies within art history itself.

Human impact on climate

Of Weather, however, speaks more directly to how humans are affecting weather. “Because of the warming oceans, the greenhouse effect is affecting the type of clouds that are being produced: we’re getting more high-level clouds that actually trap heat and less low-level clouds that reflect heat,” Walde explains.

That concept is shown in the exhibit via the size of the images his team are carrying. “We have the weight of responsibility to struggle with these things, and using art handlers to do that also shows some of the invisible workforce that goes on behind the scenes to make the art world mobile. Right now, we have mobile biennials and art fairs happening all over the world, and there’s an environmental impact to that.”

Be sure to save the date for a pair of live performances of “Weather Conditions” as well: 2pm Sat, Feb 28 and 2pm Sat, March 28, both at downtown’s Legacy Gallery.

“Of Weather Movements” will feature the pictures in the exhibition being activated by a team of art handlers in a live performance based on motion-picture camera movements and editing techniques, accompanied by a live performance of the Of Weather music score by a string quartet.

Coming up next

Currently, Walde is working on his latest video installation — a new opera, Forestorium, which he calls “the best thing I’ve ever done” — the filming for which undertaken in July 2025 when he took 100 people into the unpopulated traditional Ma’amtagila village site of Hiladi on the east coast of Vancouver Island (near Campbell River). which will hopefully be seen in 2027.