Wyrmwear Workshop | Content for the webpage
Programs & Events
A collage of symbolic forms, including artworks and diagrams, with parts of a neon green earthworm appearing at various points across the image.
How do we make meaning, through art, through networks, through technology, through symbolic form?
Our contemporary computational era is marked by the co-construction of meaning between humans and machines. The compromised environment in which this meaning-making occurs has created an urgent need to locate and practice alternative ways of reclaiming power and creativity. Stigmergy presents an alternative.
Beginning with a exhibition walkthrough of Stigmergy, this workshop, led by Jasmin Pfefferkorn and Sean McMorrow, picks up on the themes explored in the exhibition to discuss how we might understand digital art as symbolic form and how this understanding might reconfigure our productive agency within digital systems.
Wyrmware participants will produce a collaborative digital visual composition guided by the discussion, which will feed into the exhibition as an intervening artwork within the show. This co-authored compositional work will then find its archival niche on the NCM website.
Places in the workshop are limited and include access to NCM exhibitions. Registration is through an EOI process. EOIs open Friday 1 May and close Wednesday 30 June. Successful participants will be notified during the first week of July.
Speakers
Sean McMorrow
Workshop Facilitator
Sean McMorrow is editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy, and lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne. He is author of The Power to Assume Form: Cornelius Castoriadis and Regimes of Historicity (Lexington Books, 2023) and co-edited Marcel Gauchet and the Crisis of Democratic Politics (Routledge, 2022).
Jasmin Pfefferkorn
Workshop Facilitator
Jasmin Pfefferkorn is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. She is the author of Museums as Assemblage (Routledge, 2023) and co-editor of the special issue of Media Theory ‘Seeing Photographically’ (2024) and Decentering Ethics: AI Art as Method (Open Humanities Press, 2025). She is currently the lead investigator of the project ‘The Impact of Generative Technologies on Museums’ Practices’ (2024-2027). Her research sits at the intersection of museum studies, critical AI, media theory, visual culture, and aesthetics.
Mat Spisbah (PSEUDO)
Exhibition Walkthrough
PSEUDO is a new media aggregate working across live performance, expanded cinema, sound, and digital infrastructure. Harrison Hall, Mat Spisbah, Sam McGilp and Henry Lai-Pyne build hybrid works where digital media and physical bodies occupy the same space. Based on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country in Brunswick, Melbourne, the group operates across Australia and the Asia-Pacific, developing performances, collaborative projects, workshops, and residencies.
Venue Accessibility
- NCM is fully wheelchair accessible
- All gender and accessible toilets are available on both levels
- Hearing loop available
- NCM is a high sensory space with a variety of noise and lighting.
- This program includes seating for all attendees
- If you have any other access needs please get in touch, we'd love to help hello@ncm.org.au
Learn More About PSEUDO X NCM: Stigmergy
PSEUDO X NCM: Stigmergy
