Come join us on March 30th between 6PM - 8PM for this online workshop exploring the wonderful world of Hiba Ali and New Art City. As always all of our workshops are free and suggested donation.

Dreams ignite our imagination—and in this workshop, we begin there. Starting with the dream as inspiration, participants will collaborate to build a shared 3D collage inside New Art City—an open, interactive virtual world. Through short demonstrations and hands-on experimentation, you’ll learn how to work with 3D objects, images, GIFs, and soundscapes to design an immersive collective “dream world.”

We’ll introduce tools such as Blender used with New Art City for shaping space, atmosphere, and narrative, while drawing conceptual inspiration from contemporary digital art, Afrofuturism, speculative fiction, and critical theory. Together, we’ll reflect on dreaming as a communal act of world-building—one grounded in accessibility, disability justice, and collective futurity.

Some references we'll be drawing from are Octavia Butler, Sayaka Murata, Annika Hansteen-Izora, Tabita Rezaire, Ruha Benjamin, Refik Anadol, Ursula K. Le Guin, Morehshin Allahyari, Legacy Russell, Carolyn Lazard, and The Hyphen-Labs Collective.

During the session, you’ll contribute elements, visuals, text, objects, or sound, to a growing shared environment, exploring how individual visions can merge into expansive speculative worlds. The workshop concludes with a collaborative walkthrough and informal presentation of the evolving dreamscape, emphasizing discovery, connection, and playful experimentation.

About the teaching artist - Dr. Hiba Ali is a digital artist and scholar whose visionary practice spans immersive digital environments, sculpture-based installations, moving images, garments, and sound. The term digital somatics was coined by Ali to describe a groundbreaking method of engaging the body–mind–spirit connection through the principles of game design, worldbuilding, and narrative storytelling. Through virtual reality, 3D animation, and augmented reality, Ali creates portals of solace and care—slowing down time and transforming digital space into a liminal site for healing and collective transformation.

Ali is the recipient of the 2024 Performing and Creative Arts Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, a 2024–2025 member of New Inc’s Art & Code track, and from 2025 to 2026 serves as a Fellow in Digital at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.

Ali’s work has achieved international recognition with exhibitions at leading institutions and festivals including the New Museum, Belladonna, Index NYC, UAAD.Art (New York City), Transmediale, re:publica (Berlin), Kunstverein Pforzhiem, VBKÖ (Vienna), Ars Electronica (Linz), Onassis Stegi (Athens), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), Centre A (Vancouver), the Horse Hospital and 15 Folds (London), the Portland Art Museum, InterAccess and Trinity Square Video (Toronto), Alserkal Avenue (Dubai), Dhow Countries Music Academy (Zanzibar), Rehnsgatan 3 (Stockholm), Kalakendra (Dhaka), UMAM D&R (Beirut), Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, IMC5533 (Istanbul), and FILE – Electronic Language International Festival (São Paulo), among others