Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Book Talk with Ashley Wong

Join us for a discussion about how we make and circulate art today, hosted by Ashley Lee Wong, featuring Miriam Arbus, Diana Lynn VanderMeulen, & Tobias Williams.

In Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies Through Art and Technology (The MIT Press), Ashley Lee Wong explores the economic relationships of artists working at the nexus of art and technology as they negotiate a means to make art in a neoliberal creative economy. Wong looks at the diverse ways in which artworks circulate, both online and offline, in galleries, on digital platforms, and on media facades, and investigates some of the mechanisms that enable artists to create works, including selling artworks and NFTs, grants, licensing, commissions, and artist residencies. The book also looks at the ways in which artists collaborate with corporations and develop practices as commercial entities themselves.

The book provides unique insights into the diverse creative and economic processes that shape the meaning and value of artworks. Wong seeks to shift away from notions of individual authorship and finite artworks that can be bought and sold, and instead toward an understanding of artistic practices as collaborative, social, and cultural processes. Rather than critique this economy, Ecologies of Artistic Practice opens space for engaging in hypercommercialized contexts, while considering how money is not an end goal, but a means to initiate or continue an artistic process.

Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies Through Art and Technology is available Open Access through MIT Press.

This event is supported by MA Cultural Management programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

About the Author

Ashley Lee Wong, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Associate Director of the MA Cultural Management programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of MetaObjects, a studio that facilitates digital projects with artists and cultural institutions. She is managing editor of Technophany, Journal for Philosophy and Technology. She is the author of the monograph, Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies through Art and Technology (The MIT Press, 2025).

About the Speakers

Miriam Arbus (Sky Fine Foods) has an ongoing, developing practice interested in issues that intersect around new medias and digital technologies, post internet and post digital existences, and new feminisms. She investigates the shifting geographies of new realities and landscapes and the potentials this offers for openness and equalising representation. Her practice has taken form most frequently in curatorial pursuits: organising conceptually-driven exhibitions and participatory experiences that are responsive and relational.

Diana Lynn VanderMeulen is an artist living in Toronto, Canada. Her practice is fluid between analogue and digital mediums with a focus on extended reality and cyclical material use as she develops expansive, multisensory environments. She has been an artist-in-residence at SAT Montreal and exhibited at Nuit Blanche, SAW Gallery, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, MUTEK, New Forms Festival, Toutoune Gallery, Video Pool, with Venus Fest at InterAccess.

Tobias Williams is a Toronto-based artist, educator, and curator with an MFA from York University. Working across animation, 3D media, and XR, his practice investigates the historic and contemporary relationship between art, technology, and culture, exploring how emerging technologies shape perception, philosophy, and cultural narratives. He serves on the board of the Toronto Animated Image Society (TAIS) and teaches digital media and animation at OCAD University and Humber Polytechnic. His work has been exhibited and screened at galleries and animation festivals across Canada and internationally.