Vancouver’s AI underground came alive this December, rewriting the rules of what meetups can be. While NeurIPS buzzed downtown, we transformed the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre into a pulsating hub of creativity, connection, and code.
For the first time in a full year of sold-out AI meetups, I got to hold down the fort at the check-in desk, welcoming old friends and new faces alike. Around 200 brilliant minds poured in, each packing their own vision of what AI could be. Massive respect to our volunteer crew who nailed it so hard that I could actually stay up front, connecting with everyone.
VOT 4044
A mesmerizing future-focused act, VOT fused spoken word, live singing, and narrative world-building into a performance that reimagines technology as a liberating force. The persona came from a far-future timeline where AI helps dismantle oppressive systems, ensures “land back,” and fosters creative equality. VOT’s ballad-like songs and calls to action challenged conventional dystopian portrayals of AI.
By blending sci-fi aesthetics—citing Blade Runner while rejecting its gloom—VOT proposed a more optimistic arc where BIPOC women, among others, hold the code and shape their own destinies. In a raw, emotive style, she questioned what love and sentience could mean to an AI and insisted that genuine compassion, rather than corporate control, should define our shared future. Inviting attendees to an afterparty performance, VOT left a lingering, provocative vision of what’s possible.
Peter-Lucas Jones (Te Hiku Media, Aotearoa / New Zealand)
Peter-Lucas, recently named to Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in AI,” captivated the room with the story behind Te Hiku Media’s M?ori language initiatives. He detailed a path from humble tribal radio stations to advanced speech-recognition and text-to-speech technologies—all built in-house on a local GPU cluster in New Zealand. Central to their work is a community-centered approach and a custom data license to protect M?ori language data from exploitation.
Peter-Lucas emphasized the vital role of “Reading Competitions” and collective efforts that crowdsource thousands of voice samples—empowering M?ori speakers of all ages to contribute. By framing AI as an extension of self-determination, Te Hiku preserves not just words but an entire cultural worldview for future generations. In underlining the importance of trust and data sovereignty, he made it clear that each step in AI development can—and should—be guided by community values.
Caroline & Michael Running Wolf (FLAIR)
Caroline and Michael introduced FLAIR—First Languages AI Reality—a venture focused on revitalizing Indigenous languages through speech recognition and culturally oriented AI development. Inspired by New Zealand’s Te Hiku Media, they are creating novel approaches to preserve and share linguistic knowledge, ensuring communities maintain sovereignty over their data.
By highlighting current projects and future goals, Caroline and Michael framed AI not as a top-down tool, but as a medium for mutual empowerment. Emphasizing co-design and robust collaboration, they demonstrated how local languages, when harnessed ethically through AI, can strengthen community bonds and pass on cultural heritage to future generations.
Philippe Pasquier (Metacreation Lab, SFU)
Philippe Pasquier, director of SFU’s Meta Creation Lab, presented a decade-plus of research on Creative AI, from early generative systems to today’s cutting-edge. He showcased projects such as Audio Metaphor (prompt-based audio generation) and a large-scale AI composition engine for music.
These tools emphasized “small data” and “model crafting” as alternatives to corporate big-data models, allowing artists to train personal AI models on their own curated datasets.
Philippe underscored how vital it is to bring artists into the development process early, ensuring the technology meets real creative needs. He introduced open-source tools like “Autodume/Autolume,” designed for non-coders to train and manipulate AI models with direct visual interfaces.
By spotlighting collaborations with local and international artists, Philippe inspired the crowd to consider how AI can broaden creative expression rather than replace it.
Marco Bongiorno Nardelli (University of North Texas)
Marco, who has a joint appointment in physics and composition, presented a snippet of his larger multimedia installation showcased at the Currents Festival in Santa Fe. His background in complex systems—looking at music as networks—translates into compositions shaped by data and probabilistic models.
Implementing a self-contained “small-data” approach, Marco explained how he records and trains neural networks on his own musical fragments. This results in a unique AI-driven compositional method that values artistry as much as computation. By navigating the emergent patterns within music, Marco’s process offers an alternative to mass corporate datasets, preserving a deeply personal touch.
Carole Anne Hilton (Indigenomics Institute)
Carole Anne Hilton introduced her vision of Indigenous economic reconciliation through the lens of “Indigenomics”—a movement she founded to foreground Indigenous power within financial and policy frameworks. She highlighted the idea that Indigenous communities have historically been overlooked in economic contexts, and emphasized how AI tools can help change that narrative by embedding cultural respect and sovereignty into modern tech initiatives.
Carole Anne’s approach underscored the massive potential for combining AI with Indigenous-led projects—especially to preserve language, share stories, and drive sustainable forms of development. Her collaboration with Chris and others focuses on situating AI within ethical frameworks that honor Indigenous ways of knowing. In the transcript, she spoke briefly but powerfully, making it clear that Indigenous perspectives must be at the forefront as emerging technologies shape tomorrow’s economies.
Pravin Pillay (Move37XR)
Pravin, founder of Move37XR, grounded his talk in the famous “Move 37” moment from AlphaGo—a symbol of AI innovation breaking from traditional human logic. He drew parallels between planetary boundaries and the transformative potential of AI, suggesting that we need new models for sustainability and ethics as we enter an era of unprecedented change.
Referencing past work with organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Pravin highlighted how humanitarian concerns intersect with advanced tech. He teased a future event in April 2025 focused on immersive experiences, bridging Indigenous wisdom, climate realities, and extended reality (XR) technologies. By imagining a 10,000-year time horizon, Pravin challenged the room to think beyond short-term gains, exploring how AI might help preserve humanity and the planet for centuries to come.
Brittney Smaila
Brittney, a neuroscientist and lecturer, delivered a poetic reflection weaving AI, humanity, and the concept of flying straight into unseen obstacles. Her piece likened the drive toward future tech to birds crashing into glass windows—an analogy for unforeseen consequences when forging ahead without caution or comprehensive understanding.
She invited everyone to consider the tension between ambition, creativity, and humility. By sharing personal anecdotes—like childhood dreams of flying that ended abruptly—Brittney reminded the audience that real progress often demands pauses, self-awareness, and community support. Both playful and profound, her spoken-word underscored the meetup’s theme of exploring AI with eyes wide open.
Mayank Sanganeria (Visiting Artist from New York)
Hailing from New York, Mayank Sanganeria brings a unique convergence of physics, music technology, and AI product engineering to his creative practice. At the meetup, he showcased an audiovisual piece inspired by the synesthetic visions of Wassily Kandinsky—offering viewers a dynamic blend of shapes and sounds that emulated the artist’s mental landscape. Mayank first began experimenting with AI long before it was a buzzword, channeling machine learning research into live, visually reactive systems that respond to music in real time.
Outside his artistic explorations, Mayank is a software engineer at Meta, drawing on professional experience at companies like Uber and Leanplum to bridge the gap between emerging tech and human expression. His passion for learning—evident in his background in both physics and music—fuels a deep curiosity about how AI can spark novel forms of creativity. By weaving his technical expertise with his love for art, Mayank aims to create immersive experiences that push beyond static prompts and invite audiences into new dimensions of sound and imagery.
Lionel (also known as UCODIA) started with a historical reflection: just as photography once disrupted realist painting and led to abstract art, AI could now catalyze a leap toward uncharted forms of creative expression. He reminded everyone that while AI can rapidly generate photorealistic images and code, there remains a distinctly human dimension—our lived experiences, senses, and consciousness.
Showcasing Alpha Prism a collaborative project build in collab with me and the Metacreation Lab using Autolume, Lionel demonstrated a latent-space portrait installation. Trained on thousands of my old analog photos, the model morphs new faces into a dreamlike set of images. His approach explored how an AI with “no prior concept of faces” might interpret and reconstruct human features, blurring the line between digital memory and analog reality.
Professor Patrick Parra Pennefather (UBC Emerging Media Lab)
Dr. Patrick Pennefather took the stage with characteristic humor and energy. He led the audience in a participatory AI-themed singalong featuring a Santa-and-Krampus twist—an inventive blend of holiday tradition and emerging tech references. Patrick also revealed he’d been collecting prompts from the community, using them to guide the creation of playful musical pieces that blur the line between human-driven art and algorithmic collaboration.
Beyond the entertainment, Patrick’s performance demonstrated how creative artistry can connect attendees to complex topics like AI ethics and user agreements. He peppered in quick “research surveys”—raising hands to see who had used AI under certain conditions—sparking light conversation about AI misalignment or surveillance.
Throughout, Patrick emphasized the importance of combining authentic human creativity with machine generative processes, reminding everyone that technology ultimately serves as a tool for collective expression.
Kevin Friel (MrPixelWizard)
Kevin Friel, widely recognized as “Pixel Wizard,” shared his real-time generative video setup. Running on a powerful NVIDIA 4090, Kevin’s system produced dynamic visuals triggered by conversation topics—an impressive feat that linked audio-visual production with spontaneous interactions. He explained its background in news broadcasting, where last-minute graphics and real-time overlays are often crucial.
By leveraging Stable Diffusion and custom-coded interfaces, Kevin’s work demonstrated how live production spaces—podcasts, interviews, or music events—can incorporate AI-driven art on the fly. I praised Kevin for his ability to transform ordinary video sessions into Hollywood-caliber projects, inviting those with larger budgets to consider how generative systems can streamline high-end, imaginative content creation.
Sev Geraskin, WiserRobotics
Sev Geraskin spearheads the development of WisdomOrb at WiserRobotics—a neuro-affective AI platform designed to interpret and respond to human emotions in real time.
By merging advanced signal processing, multi-dimensional affect modeling, and “empathetic response calibration,” WisdomOrb bridges the gap between machine intelligence and emotional intelligence.
Unlike humanoid robots, WiserRobotics focuses on non-anthropomorphic designs that tune in to users’ inner emotional states while minimizing any artificial “human-like” façade.
Holy Mother of the Void AKA Orbit Princess
Orbit Princess is a performance artist focusing on movement, dance, and sensor-based experimentation. Early in the event, she brought dynamic visuals and a reminder of the embodied side of emerging tech—demonstrating how the human body can counterbalance the often disembodied nature of AI and digital projection.
By weaving her own personal style of dance with experimental sensors, Orbit Princess previously showcased a live study of motion in tandem with technology. Her presence near the entrance—the “lobby” area—set an inclusive, playful tone, encouraging attendees to explore not only ideas but also the sensory dimensions of AI.
To my co-conspirators—Philippe Pasquier, Amin Sharifi, and Lorraine Lowe—thank you for seeing the vision. To Metacreation Lab, the Space Centre crew, and Enya Learning—thank you for providing our launch pad. To every volunteer who kept this spaceship flying, you’re the true MVPs.
And to every brilliant brain who showed up ready to explore, hack, and co-create—you’re not just attending events, you’re designing tomorrow’s blueprint. Stay tuned for photo evidence, video transmissions, and if you made it to the 2track afterparty… let’s just say some legends belong off the record. ?
While the world worries about AI replacing humans, we’re here building a different story. All year long, we’ve forged places where code meets chaos, where silicon gets a soul, where future tech is hacked wide open by the creative underground. This December AI Meetup was proof that we’ve levelled up.
2024 was about laying foundations and flipping narratives. In 2025, we’re not just scaling up—we’re inviting you to be a part of it. We’re looking for volunteers, sponsors, and collaborators to help shape what’s next. If you’ve got the itch to contribute, to push boundaries, or to support this creative AI revolution, come join us. Let’s rewrite the rules together.
Keep building, keep breaking, keep dreaming, you beautiful chaos engines. The future looks mighty interesting from up here.
KK
P.S. To the suits who think AI is about optimization and efficiency—come see what happens when you let the creatives drive. We’re not just adopting future tech; we’re inventing it. And it sounds GLORIOUS.
#VancouverAI #FutureProofCreatives #HackTheFuture #AIUnderground #DigitalDreams #NeurIPS2024 #CommunityFirst #BuildTheFuture
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