Where Art Meets Machine: Creating Stories That Change How We See
Two award-winning directors whose work spans VR, AI film, and immersive media examine whether technology serves storytelling — or the other way around.
Why we picked this
The AI-versus-art debate is usually theoretical. Michaela Ternasky-Holland and Aaron Santiago have actually made the work — Emmy-winning VR docs, AI films built with SORA — and can answer from the inside.
Michaela Ternasky-Holland and Aaron Santiago have built careers at the intersection of technology and narrative — Emmy-winning VR documentaries screened at Tribeca and Cannes, films made in collaboration with OpenAI’s SORA, projects that move through generative AI, motion capture, 360° cinematography, projection mapping, and volumetric capture. Their question isn’t whether AI can make art. It’s what happens to meaning when it does.
The conversation centers on a tension that anyone paying attention to the current moment will recognize: does new technology inspire new stories, or does it chase the tools at the expense of the telling? These two directors have lived on both sides of that line.
At the National Arts Club — itself a century-old institution committed to the dialogue between art and society — the venue mirrors the question. An evening for filmmakers, technologists, and anyone trying to understand what storytelling looks like when the tools change faster than the stories.