Moderator, Panel 4 – Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence, Panel 6 – Indigenous Digital Media Labs – Critical Mass, Closing Ceremony, Welcome from the Partners
Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media theorist, poet, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he conducts research/creation projects exploring computation as a creative and cultural material. Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, critical, creative and technical levels simultaneously. He is the University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well as Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Born and raised in northern California, Lewis is Hawaiian and Samoan.
Lewis directs the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, and co-directs the Indigenous Futures Research Centre, the Indigenous Protocol and AI Workshops, the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network, and the Skins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Video Game Design.
Lewis’ creative and production work has been featured at Ars Electronica, Mobilefest, Elektra, Urban Screens, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, and FILE, among other venues, and has been recognized with the inaugural Robert Coover Award for Best Work of Electronic Literature, two Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mentions, several imagineNATIVE Best New Media awards and six solo exhibitions. His research interests include emergent media theory and history, and methodologies for conducting art-led technology research. In addition to being lead author on the award-winning “Making Kin with the Machines” essay and editor of the groundbreaking Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper, he has contributed to chapters in collected editions covering Indigenous futures, mobile media, video game design, machinima and experimental pedagogy with Indigenous communities.
Lewis has worked in a range of industrial research settings, including Interval Research, US West’s Advanced Technology Group, and the Institute for Research on Learning, and, at the turn of the century, he founded and ran a research studio for the venture capital firm Arts Alliance.
Lewis is a current ISO-MIT Co-Creation Lab Fellow, a former Trudeau Fellow and a former Carnegie Fellow. He received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems (Cognitive Science) and B.A. in German Studies (Philosophy) from Stanford University, and an M.Phil. in Design from the Royal College of Art.