Arcolabs, Jakarta (2026)

15/04/2026

Congratulations to on being selected as the Curator-in-Residence for ARKO X Ars Electronica 2026!

Established in 2023, this partnership between the two institutions supports Korean curators at the forefront of art and technology. The first phase of her residency begins this April, witnessing the Prix Ars Electronica jury sessions firsthand. This summer, she will be back to join the festival production team while advancing her research on Translocal Media Art Ecologies to bridge the gap between global institutional frameworks and our vibrant Nusantara media art scene.

Stay tuned as she brings these insights home to the SEA Young Media Art Festivals later this year!

20/12/2025

Throwback to the final Arts & Design Talks III: Rethinking Technology and Experience held on 5 Dec 2025, via Zoom.

In “Design Theory for Opening Up the Imperfective Aspect,” Shigeru Kobayashi invited us to see technology not only as devices or systems, but as a way of shaping how we perceive and live in the world. Using the rise of generative AI as a lens, he noted how modern tech often favors optimization, automation, and predictable outcomes, sometimes reducing human experience, creativity, and agency.

To think otherwise, he introduced three aspects of time, perfective, imperfective, and perfect, as a framework for imagining futures through design. The “perfective” seeks closure: efficient, finalized, fixed. But meaningful experience often lives in the imperfective, the unfolding, the uncertain, the not-yet-complete. Drawing from Bergson, he reminded us that consciousness often shows up when our routines pause, and we must notice what is happening.

Through examples in media art, he showed how making the familiar feel unfamiliar helps us notice hidden assumptions and gradually changes how we understand ourselves and society. He closed with three guiding attitudes for designers: leave margins, start from play, and avoid deterministic future stories because the future is never finished, it is always becoming.

After the lecture, we continued with a lively discussion with four responders coming from design theory, creative advertising, interior design, and new media. It was a fruitful conversation, translating Kobayashi’s ideas into different design disciplines, and testing how “the imperfective” can open new ways to teach, make, and think across practices.

Bergson GenerativeAI CriticalDesign MediaArt NewMediaArt ArtAndTechnology DigitalCulture ARCOLABS FilamenGallery BINUSUniversity BeyondIllumination MediaXSpace

19/12/2025

Throwback to Arts & Design Talks II: Digital Media as Catalyst for Transformation held on 5 Dec 2025, via Zoom.

Our third speaker, Wildan Ali, presented “Digital Attention: How Media Transforms How We Learn and Design.” He opened with a sharp framing: screens are not just devices, they are environments of light, habits, and everyday consciousness that quietly train how attention works.

Drawing from his research on short-form video, attention, and learning, Wildan unpacked how today’s on-demand feeds, fast cuts, and constant novelty shape children’s focus differently than earlier media rhythms. The key point was not “screens are the enemy,” but that they train the mind in a new way, often clashing with slow, sustained tasks like reading or homework.

He offered practical principles for educators, parents, and designers: chunk tasks into small steps, design with rhythm (short input, pause, response), and add protective friction like device-free warm-up time or removing autoplay for learning content.

He concluded his talk with a question: if screens are shaping attention every day, what kind of attention do we want to help the next generation grow?

18/12/2025

Throwback to Arts & Design Talks II: Digital Media as Catalyst for Transformation held on 5 Dec 2025, via Zoom.

Our next presenter, Tan Yunyi, shared “Digital Inclusion for Seniors: Creative Pedagogies for Lifelong Learning.” She began with a simple reminder: for many seniors, the digital world can feel “a world away” not because they cannot learn, but because the barriers are often emotional, social, and design-related.

Tan reframed digital inclusion as more than access to devices and internet. It is about skills, confidence, and empowerment. Through two Malaysian initiatives, Bengkel Teknologi Senior (est. 2019) and Silver Lab (est. 2022), she showed how seniors can build digital fluency through respectful guidance, peer support, and intergenerational learning.

One significant takeaway was her focus on digital creativity: turning technology from a scary tool into a space for self-expression. From storytelling and play-based learning to authentic everyday tasks (and even “slow-tech” pacing), her approach helps seniors not only use smartphones and platforms, but also feel at home in them, with dignity, joy, and community. 📱✨

17/12/2025

Throwback to Arts & Design Talks II: Digital Media as Catalyst for Transformation held on 5 Dec 2025 via Zoom.

Our first presenter, Shan Wong, shared “How can VR support emotional well-being, memory, and creative expression for older adults?”

Grounded in Hong Kong’s rapidly aging society and the urgent social and mental needs of older adults, Wong proposed art learning as a meaningful path to reduce loneliness and strengthen well-being.

Wong introduced a workshop model for participants aged 60+, which extended illustration into AR/XR/VR as a visual language for dialogue, learning, and connection.

The project was developed with a community hub for elderly residents in Sheung Wan (壹合 Project house ), and structured through a series of hands-on activities.

One striking takeaway was the shift from “art-tech for elders” toward “art-tech by elders.” ✨ Participants shaped story-worlds of old Sheung Wan by making objects and characters from their memories, then turning them into VR elements through simple processes like Play-doh sculpting and mobile 3D scanning.

Over time, sharing collective memories helped move participants from isolation toward community, opening space for cross-generational dialogue and cultural continuity.

17/12/2025

Throwback to Arts & Design Talks I: Digital Media, Curatorial Practice, and New Ecologies held on 22 Nov 2025 at .

Our third presenter, Roopesh Sitharan, shared “Curating Within Limits: Caring through Screen and Soil.” Beginning with the root of curate (from curare, “to care for”), he reminded us that curating is not only about caring for artworks, but also about shaping the conditions that make care and meaningful encounters possible.

One key idea he offered is that the curatorial is less an act than a condition. It depends on infrastructures, technologies, environments, and the realities of “messy material constraints.”

He then introduced two of his curatorial projects, OBJECT MATTERS: Emancipating the Collection of Rahime Harun (2021) and LINTAS LAUT: Traversing the Sea (2022). Together, these examples created a compelling bridge between Patricia Adele’s ecological lens and Jeong Ok Jeon’s technological perspective.

By thinking through care and curating via SCREEN and SOIL, Sitharan showed how curatorial forms are shaped by the needs and limits of our moment, and how care, art, and context co-produce meaning in contemporary practice.

16/12/2025

Throwback to Arts & Design Talks I: Digital Media, Curatorial Practice, and New Ecologies held on 22 Nov 2025 at .

Our second presenter, Jeong Ok Jeon, spoke on “From Virtual Gallery to Digital Curation: Curating as a Networked Experience.” She mapped how curating has expanded from simply “showing” artworks into building digital connections between artists, audiences, institutions, and technologies.

Her talk revisited the pandemic as a major turning point where global museum closures and the sudden collapse of physical attendance forced new experiments. In Indonesia the impact was deeply felt across museums and creative workers.

What emerged after the first wave of online archivic “presentation” was a bigger question. How can hybrid spaces create shared experiences where art, audience, and technology interact as equals?

Jeon then highlighted three projects as living examples of this networked approach. Mediascape (multisensory access through physical works plus a 360° virtual tour), Age of Consent (co-creation across online platforms), and the recent Imposter (browser-based curation that replaces ads with artworks).

15/12/2025

Throwback to Arts & Design Talks I: Digital Media, Curatorial Practice, and New Ecologies, held on 22 Nov 2025 at .

The first presenter, Patricia Adele shared her talk, “Media x Space Exhibition: Articulating Ecological Thinking through Exhibition Design Across Asia.” As the exhibition curator, she introduced the ‘Media x Space’ nexus where digital/new media meets the cultural and architectural reality of the gallery, creating phygital, immersive encounters that shift visitors from spectators into active participants.

Through two lenses, Ecological Thinking and Critical Thinking, Adele connected sustainability and material life cycles with the need to question dominant narratives and amplify marginalized voices.

She also grounded the project in Indonesia’s challenge where environmental issues are often complex, easy to ignore, and demand more accessible ways of engagement.

What inspired us from her talk is that the exhibition theme was not only in the artworks, but also in the way the exhibition was built through ethical operational choices and a practice-led process of learning by doing. 🌿

29/11/2025

Join us on 5 December 2025 for a full day of Arts & Design Talks with two captivating themes:
✨ Digital Media as Catalyst for Transformation
✨ Rethinking Technology and Experience

Hear from speakers from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan as they explore how digital media reshapes memory, learning, inclusion, and our understanding of technology itself.

Scan the QR code to register—free admission!
Part of Media X Space: Beyond Illumination at Filamen Gallery KL.

29/11/2025

How can we rethink technology beyond efficiency, optimization, and “problem-solving”?

In this special lecture, Shigeru Kobayashi introduces ideas from his new book, What Is Technology, Really? A Field Guide to Co-Transforming by Opening the Imperfective Aspect.

Drawing on Bergson, Heidegger, Simondon, and contemporary thinkers, Kobayashi proposes the Imperfective Aspect—a way of encountering technology from within its unfolding process. Rather than treating technology as fixed or deterministic, he invites us to see it across multiple time scales: from milliseconds of perception to decades of societal transformation.

His talk challenges the limits of “engineering problem solving,” critiques techno-ableism, and reframes design as a practice of co-transformation, care, and play. By leaving space for openness, deviation, and creative misuse, we can imagine technological futures that are more inclusive, participatory, and genuinely human.

Scan the QR code to register—free admission!
Part of Media X Space: Beyond Illumination at Filamen Gallery KL.

29/11/2025

How has growing up in a world of screens transformed the way young people learn and respond to visual design?

In his talk, Wildan Ali examines the rise of digital attention—from short-form videos to rapid content switching—and how these media habits quietly reshape focus, thinking patterns, and idea formation.

As digital environments evolve, educators and designers must rethink how we teach, communicate, and design for learners shaped by a new attention landscape. This session explores the challenges and opportunities of working with—and not against—digitally conditioned attention.

Scan the QR code to register—free admission!
Part of Media X Space: Beyond Illumination at Filamen Gallery KL.

Arcolabs

15/04/2026

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19/12/2025

18/12/2025

17/12/2025

17/12/2025

16/12/2025

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29/11/2025

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