Team

Julie Andreyev

Julie Andreyev is a Vancouver-based artist-activist, researcher and educator. Her artwork, called Animal Lover, made with collaborative others, explores more-than-human ways of knowing to develop kinships with nonhuman lifeforms and ecologies. She is exploring how art can address the climate emergency through creativity with the ecologies and species close to home. Andreyev’s work has been shown locally, nationally and internationally, and she has published essays in academic journals, books, catalogues and magazines. She has an MA in Liberal Studies, and a PhD from Simon Fraser University. Her research and artwork is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design where she teaches in the New Media + Sound Arts major and Animal Ethics + Creativity courses. 

Andreyev enjoys walking with her canine collaborators, Tom and Sugi, paying attention to the liveliness of the local animals, trees and plants, and Earth forces. She is currently working on creative co-productions with birds, including the crow family whose territory includes her home (Bird Park Survival Station), and investigating the creation of immersive art experiences about old-growth forest ecologies (Wild Empathy). 

contact: jandreye @ ecuad.ca

Maria Lantin

Maria Lantin is the Director of the Basically Good Media Lab at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She has a deep interest in space and movement both physical and metaphorical, and this is woven through her work in immersive media and interaction. She takes pleasure in scanning the technological horizon for trends in human fascination – what is grabbing our attention and why. Formative experiences include a BSc and PhD in Computing Science (Dalhousie University and Simon Fraser University), a wonderful stint at Mainframe Entertainment working on the first ever stereoscopic animation for the IMAX screen (it never made it to the screen but it was amazing), three fantastic years at the ground-breaking Banff New Media Institute’s Advanced Art and Technology (A.R.T) labs, and now heading into thirteen years at Emily Carr University. Her curiosity is currently directed at Virtual and Augmented Reality for art making and communication.

Dr. Lantin’s current research is in the design of virtual environments from a less human-centred point of view incorporating relations and rhythms of the natural world into design techniques and implementation. Another related interest is in language, movement, and performance with and within virtual worlds — designing new social and poetic experiences for dancers, actors, writers, and audiences.

contact: mlantin @ ecuad.ca

Simon Lysander Overstall

Simon Lysander Overstall is a computational media artist, and musician/composer from Vancouver, Canada. His work is developed with generative, interactive, or performative elements. He is particularly interested in computational creativity in music, physics-based sound synthesis and performance in virtual environments, and biologically and ecologically inspired art and music systems. Overstall’s productions include custom performance systems and interactive art installations that have been shown in Canada, the US, Europe, and China. He has also composed sound designs and music for dance, theatre, and installations. He has a MA in Sound in New Media at Aalto University in Helsinki, a BFA in Music Composition from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, and an Associate in Music (Jazz) Diploma from Vancouver Island University.

contact: soverstall @ ecuad.ca

Damien Gillis

Damien Gillis is a BC-based documentary filmmaker and journalist. He co-directed and produced the feature doc Fractured Land, which was a top-ten audience choice at Hotdocs film festival in Toronto and won Best BC Film and the VIFF Impact Canadian Audience Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival (2015). He has directed and produced numerous of short docs, including Primeval: Enter the Incomappleux – a journey into one of the world’s last truly intact inland temperate rainforests – which helped inspire the Wild Empathy project. He recently completed his first narrative short film, Shadow Trap, which is premiering at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival. As a journalist, he was the co-founder and publisher of the online journal The Common Sense Canadian and his writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Desmog Canada (Now the Narwhal), and The Tyee. 

Dee Brink

As a kid, Dee Brink was interested in aquatic life, zoology and animal ethology. She wondered about how animals sense and respond to their environments, and how evolution has shaped differences in animal brains and behaviours. Brink has a BSc in Biology from Long Island University, a MSc from UC Irvine and a PhD from U Oregon. She held a Post-doc and 2 RA posts at UBC and SFU, researching in neurobiology, physiology and zoology. She’s done many gigs as a sessional instructor at SFU and UBC. Currently she is researching the neurobiology of gas sensing in trout, and fostering critical thinking in science education. The Wild Empathy project appeals to her because other life forms, including humans, have evolved many similar molecular and cellular mechanisms which support the process of life. Typically sympathy and empathy are not extended to non-human life forms, and are reserved only for other people. The WE project asks: “Can we extend empathy to a non-human life form which is very different from humans: an old growth red cedar or Doug fir?” Further, can sympathy/empathy be acted on in order to protect these old growth trees?

Tom Cummins

Tom was the lead Exhibition Designer at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, one of Canada’s premier museums, where he worked closely with the executive team, curators and multiple contractors to design and manage substantial modifications to the facility and upgrades to the existing galleries. Leading a multi-disciplinary team, Tom planned and managed the construction of new exhibition spaces and developed new interactive learning environments.

More recently, Tom was the Senior Exhibition Designer and Project Manager at AldrichPears Associates. In this role he planned, designed and managed multiple full-phase projects, providing innovative interpretive planning and exhibition design to mission driven, cultural institutions around the world. He was also the design lead and project manager responsible for the award-winning Environment Gallery at Telus World of Science in Edmonton, which took home Best Exhibition for a Large Institution at the CASC awards in 2013.

Tom now leads a dynamic team of 12 in the Exhibits Department at Science World. His team is responsible for upgrading the permanent galleries; curating and managing the logistics for the temporary feature exhibitions while also managing the demanding realities of day-to-day exhibit maintenance and operations. Providing engaging and meaningful experiences for our guests and capacity building within his department lights him up.

Lorenz Jimenez

Lorenz Jimenez an outdoor adventure, lifestyle, and sports photographer based out of Cumberland in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Originally from southern Ontario, Canada, he earned a Bachelor of Engineering Physics and Society from McMaster University in Hamilton and worked in the telecommunications industry for 10 years. Lorenz spent a year travelling throughout the US and Canada, and while documenting his travels in images, his interest in photography grew. Lorenz eventually settled in the Comox Valley in BC and an earned Professional Photography Certificate from North Island College. He still works in telecommunications but now uses photography as a creative outlet, and a way to connect with nature and community.

Alex Hass 

Alex Hass is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer and instructor. Her creative practice is based on exploring the tensions and overlaps that exist between nature and technology – visually amplifying the moments when this hybrid practice creates fresh insights and experiences for the viewer. Hass’s design practice encompasses art direction, brand + book design as well as image creation. She studied illustration and art direction at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and received her design degree in Visual Communication from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, and her Masters in Applied Art, Media stream from Emily Carr University. She has taught various aspects of design at ECU, SFU and BCIT for the last eighteen years.