Vector Festival 2025: 404_not_found
Presented by InterAccess, Vector Festival 2025, 404_not_found, embraces the broken hyperlink, the loading screen, and the sharks biting undersea fiber-optic cables.
The 12th edition of Vector Festival, 404_not_found, will resurface our forgotten realities of the 1:1 relationship between digital representations of the physical. If we held close the understanding that our digital memories had physical footprints – motherboards that can corrode or servers that require maintenance – would we still expect immortality from the web? How can we build websites that are meant to decay, perennial files, or computers that are only awake with the sun? Can our machines teach us to celebrate impermanence?
Want to plug in with us? Volunteer for the festival! Each year, Vector Festival is brought to life by spirited volunteers from the community; we’re excited to welcome you into our IRL space. Sign-up here.
Festival design & header image by Donald Zhu.
EXHIBITIONS
404_not_found: Flagship Exhibition
July 10 – August 9
Opening: July 10, 7 – 9PM at InterAccess (32 Lisgar St)
The festival’s flagship exhibition, curated by Dallas Fellini, considers notions of permanence associated with the web, repositions the anti-archival and ephemeral qualities of digital memory as generative, and reframes decay as a distinct but equal counterpart to growth.
random access memories: Game Art Residency Showcase
July 17 – 20
Opening: July 17, 7 – 9PM at Centre for Culture and Technology (39A Queen's Park Cres E)
The Vector Festival Game Art Residency, curated by Bracy Appeikumoh, supports gamemakers in their development of conceptual video games, investigating video games as time capsules, time machines, and methods of contemporary memory-making.
Server Incognito, presented with LIFT
July 10 – August 9 at Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (1137 Dupont St)
A temporal installation by Michael Lé, Server Incognito is a website that only exists when connection is lost, challenging the expectation of 24/7 digital permanence, embracing the idea that the internet, like nature, should have cycles of activity and dormancy.
EVENTS
CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT: Festival Party
Saturday, July 12 | 8 – 11PM | InterAccess (32 Lisgar St)
Tickets here
What happens on a website when we can’t connect? Maybe behind the loading screen is “a time that exists outside of every other time”* a party! Disconnect and reconnect with interactive artworks and performances that need your physical presence, IRL. Featuring music by DJ Durga. *(Wark, 2023, Raving)
WHEREELSEELSEWHERE: Audio Walk
Saturday, July 12 | 12 – 2PM | Geary Avenue
Register here
Join us for a group walk and experience an online audio project while wandering the Green Line – a proposed new linear park system in an active hydro-corridor in Toronto's west end.
Marked for Disposal: Flagship Performance
Tuesday, July 15 | 7 – 8:30PM | InterAccess (32 Lisgar St)
Tickets here
A performance and sound composition by SA Smythe that stages encounters through the anarchival: a somatic meditation on what cannot or should not be kept, and the pain and power in being mis/remembered
Canvas Conductor
Friday, July 18 | 7 – 8:30PM | InterAccess (32 Lisgar St)
Tickets here
Musical and performance duo, Duo Cichorium, performs with their bespoke instrument that integrates a painter’s canvas with a custom built synthesizer, giving four painters simultaneous control over sonic and visual output.
A London (ON) Invasion!, presented with More Noise Please!
Sunday, July 20 | 2 – 3:30PM | InterAccess (32 Lisgar St)
Tickets here
A screening of the short film “When In London Listen To Noise” written and directed by Adriana Jiménez paired with a showcase of work from some of the London, Ontario noise scene artists involved in the film.
WORKSHOPS
All workshops are hosted in-person at InterAccess (32 Lisgar St).
My Computer and I Watch Each Other (Digital Embodiment Poetics), Tara Rose Morris
Friday, July 11 | 6 – 9PM
$30 for members, $50 for non-members, register here
Explore how body gestures can generate poetic texts, visual fragments, and ambient responses using p5.js and MediaPipe to create a browser-based interactive artwork.
Pocket Portal Power Play: Wi-Fi Access Points with a Twist, Candide Uyanze
Sunday, July 13 | 1 – 4PM
$30 for members, $50 for non-members, register here
Learn how to create a custom Wi-Fi access point and web server which will appear as public Wi-Fi to surrounding devices and display your custom site.
Rituals of Reuse, Thalia Godbout, Laurel Green, RJ Remesat, & Omar Shabbar
Wednesday, July 16 | 6 – 9PM
FREE, register here
You’re invited to bid farewell to, and find new life for, deceased game controllers. By repairing our relationships with broken technologies, can we repair our relationships with each other and our larger ecosystems? In this ceremonial teardown, we reflect on hardware life-cycles and the physical footprints left by our technologies.
Ephemeral Matter: Hand Sculpted 3D Printing, Kieran Mills
Saturday, July 19 | 12PM – 4PM
$30 for members, $50 for non-members, register here
Sculpt by hand, 3D scan, and 3D print a unique personal effigy using multiple material filaments in this beginner-friendly, hands-on intro to 3D printing and OrcaSlicer.
3D Scanned Portraiture, Marcella Driver-Moliner
Saturday, July 26 | 12PM – 4PM
$30 for members, $50 for non-members, register here
Create a personalized 3D-scanned portrait using Blender and a handheld scanner. This fun, hands-on workshop is ideal for those with basic 3D skills—perfect for a profile picture with flair!
ABOUT VECTOR FESTIVAL
Vector Festival is an experimental media arts festival dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. The festival is proud to be a participatory and community-oriented initiative organized by InterAccess in Toronto, Ontario.
The festival was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, kris kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger.