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At the crossroads of imagination and innovation, the Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence program, in collaboration with Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology, empowers visionary creators to reshape how we perceive and interact with technology. This initiative invites artists to delve into the ethical and social dimensions of emerging technologies, pushing boundaries through interdisciplinary research, community engagement, and bold artistic experimentation. With access to cutting-edge research spaces, dynamic collaborations with scholars and students, and the resources to produce transformative work, Artists-in-Residence play a vital role in advancing Connected Minds' mission: building a healthier, more just society through equitable and inclusive technological innovation.
We are excited to announce Mariel Marshall as our new Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence! During her residency, Mariel will explore the growing relationships people form with AI companions, chatbots, and other synthetic beings, examining what these connections reveal about our changing understanding of intimacy, care, and belonging. Through live performance and interdisciplinary collaboration, her work will invite us to reconsider what it means to connect in an increasingly AI-driven world. Learn more about Mariel and her upcoming residency below.
Mariel Marshall
Mariel Marshall is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist working across live performance, emerging technology and audience experience. Her practice explores how technology is reshaping intimacy, connection, and the relationships people form with one another and with artificial beings. A 2025 Chalmers Arts Fellowship recipient and Dora Award winner for Innovative Experience (Game of Life), Marshall co-led the immersive performance company bluemouth inc. from 2020–2025. As 91ÑÇɫ’s 2027 Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence, her research explores artificial intimacy, culminating in Cherry’s Night Off, a performance-installation co-created with German multidisciplinary artist Fee-Gloria Grönemeyer.
Ar Ducao
Ar Ducao (they/them pronouns) is an artist, engineer, educator, and organizer who works with underrepresented and incarcerated learners. They cofounded Multimer, a patent-holding bio-spatial analytics firm awarded by the National Science Foundation SBIR (small business innovation research) program. They are also executive producer and lead creator of The Great Tit is a Bird, a sci-fi arthouse animation series and audio drama. Ducao is a part-time professor at NYU School of Engineering, NYU Prison Program, and MIT MITES. They advise the Black women’s empowerment groups Inua Kike and Birth by Us, the Callen Lorde LGBTQ+ Health Center, and the National Eczema Association.
Gala Hernández López
Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice combines film, video installations, performance, and publications. Her work critically examines computational capitalism’s impact on subjectivity, exploring virtual imaginaries, tech utopias, and human fantasies of control from an ecofeminist perspective. Her award-winning creations, including the César-winning La Mécanique des fluides (2024), have been showcased at major festivals and institutions worldwide. A PhD candidate at Paris 8, she also teaches and directs After Social Networks. She is currently in residence at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. She is working on Dreams of Prophets, a film about the history of dream engineering technologies.
Mani Mazinani
Mani Mazinani (b.1984, Tehran) is a Toronto-based artist making installation, video, film, sculpture, photographs, multiples, sound and music. His practice evolved from an early interest in sound recording, now working with the process of translating thoughts into recordings in various media. His visual work thinks about scale and perception, often combining subject matter and medium. Mazinani is currently researching origins of ancient thought, perceptual limitations of humans, and improvisation. Exhibition and performance history includes Evergreen Brick Works (2024), MOCA Toronto (2024), Tate Modern (2019), The Bentway, Toronto (2018), Tehran International Electronic Music Festival (2017), SIP Culture Centre, Suzhou (2016). (Mani Mazinani Portrait, 2025, Photo by Jill L. Aston)