On a cold September afternoon, Michael Peterson and I drove the 200 kilometres northwest from Saskatoon up to Little Pine First Nation to give a workshop to get community input into shaping our art and technology project. Our project explores how technology can be used to enhance art experiences. When we arrived, a small gathering of local artists welcomed us into the community. Small talk ensued over bannock and warm drinks. I was surprised about how openly individuals talked about themselves and their art careers and the challenges they faced in order to create art in their community.

On the morning of Saturday, September 14th, I woke up with a start as the alarm went off. The first thing that came to my mind was the Shared Spaces workshop in Regina. We had been talking about and planning this workshop for weeks. We had prepared a worksheet of questions, two pages long. The workshop was supposed to begin at 2p.m. It started on time with 7 participants. Michael started the workshop by first introducing himself, followed by a round of introductions for participants. They had to tell their name, their job and how they are connected to the art world.

The University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection has been awarded $482,150 through Canada Council for the Arts' Digital Strategy Fund. Over the three year project term, the Galleries will develop digital services to facilitate greater communication, inclusion, and engagement within the Saskatchewan arts community.

To the ensure our proposal to Canada Council's Digital Strategy Fund was grounded in an understanding of the needs and desires of the Saskatchewan arts community, in addition to precedent reviews and other secondary research, we held two design workshops (in Saskatoon and Regina) in October 2018. We asked participants - artists, arts organization representatives, UX designers, and members of the public - to describe a time they enjoyed interacting with art digitally and a time they found frustrating to gain a deeper understanding of the design possibilities for art and technology.

Lisa Birke, Associate Faculty in Digital and Extended Media and principal investigator for shARed spaces was invited to present her video, Dawn of Melancholy: A Birthday Soliloquy at the 2024 Arizona International Film Festival (AIFF). Dawn of Melancholy: A Birthday Soliloquy is a large-scale video projection embedded with two augmented reality triggers that allowed content to spill out of the screen and into the exhibition space via the visitor’s mobile dev