Three thoughts from ACMI's Future of the Arts, Culture and Technology symposium 2026
I went to ACMI's fourth FACT conference this week and found it to be an explosion of ideas that got me feeling slightly more optimistic about the future of the arts. Or perhaps it was just good to see other arts workers in the real world and know we had similar challenges. Here's three very subjective thoughts from the session this week:
1. Digital conservation needs more hypemen
The keynote was a magnificent performance by Internet Archive's freerange archivist, Jason Scott. As well as talking honestly about his onstage heart attack during his last visit to Australia, Jason showed off the neverending work of the Internet Archive to capture everything from Geocities GIFs, to spam about corn harvesters, to legal documents from Federal Courts. The latter they provide free while other organisations charge for US court documents. That was one of the biggest differences with the Australia where our archives have been publicly funded like the National Library of Australia's Pandora or the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia who are also collecting video games.
What Jason hypes-up in presentations like this is the importance of seeing conservation work. And not just in its outputs. As well as showing images of overcrowded spaces with redundant technology (imagine so many tubs of floppy disks, dvds and every other format possible that block your way to your desk), Jason highlighted the livestreaming of digitising microfiche all to low-fi beats. Putting it on camera makes it visible to the general public and there is actually an audience for this peek behind the scenes, though Jason was keen to say that the camera was an opt-in experience for staff.
Here's a taste:
Key takeaway: culture needs more passionate millionaire philanthropists
Jason emphasised that the Internet Archive is the brainchild of Brewster Kahle, who loves the organisation so much he still cycles to work at 7am every morning and participates in the daily operations. Brewster famously bought the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist building for US$4.5million just because it looked like Internet Archive's logo. Jason showed that much of the church remained including the congregation room (which instead of saints now includes statues of most former employees). It's the kind of whimsy that comes out of having an owner who just does it out of love.
2. The culture surrounding videogames needs to to be collected as much as software and hardware
Co-CEO of Britain's National Videogame Museum, John O'Shea widened the conversation to collecting the culture around videogames (and used it as one word controversially). During COVID, videogames provided social connection in the absence of physical catch ups and Animal Crossing became a place for people to meet and keep up daily routines - like a watercooler or neighbourhood dog park. This was documented beautifully in the Animal Crossing Diaries which the NVM collected including stories of lovers having catch ups and kids saying they needed to see another (if not outside) world everyday. It was some bold collecting because other institutions might have been intimidated by Nintendo's IP and lost this cultural moment.
As part of NVM's Videogames Transforming Lives exhibition at World Expo Osaka, they also showcased the work of SpecialEffect who make games more accessible including EyeMine software which allows Minecraft to be played with eye control, along with other accessibility aids they have created to make games available to everyone.
Key takeaway: China's gaming culture is vital and wild right now.
Hugh Davies was part of a panel and didn't have long to talk about gaming in China but gave a fascinating snapshot. He talked about how at one point addiction to gaming was such a concern that there were boot camps created to treat the problem of 'electronic heroin'. Videogames, however, are thriving in China right now as their industry is the largest in the world right now.
3. Liveblogging of events isn't quite dead yet
With the enshittification of Twitter, conferences lost a great way to document in real time and have those sidechats that didn't happen on the stage. This year there was a housekeeping announcement that we'd use Bluesky around the hashtag, #FACT2026. For me this felt like a slight return to that old Twitter with a way to follow the event if you weren't there.
Key takeaways: socials at events gives you bonus reading/listening/gaming
Socials should augment what is happening in the room. I learnt lots from following the stream including:
- Relooted is a great game upsetting colonialism by reclaiming "real African artifacts from Western museums in this African futurist heist game" thanks to Ruby Quail .
- Esther Anatolitis has a wealth of resources on arts advocacy up her sleeve.
- Powerwash Simulator may sound weird but 72% of people who play it report a more positive mood. Is it a game about finding order in chaos?
- Content is becoming more like muzak - a movie to watch while you make pasta according to this substack from Ruby Thelot which talks about why content is getting longer but we're not paying as much attention to it.
These are just my personal reflections and I'd be keen to hear what others got out of the event.
Disclosure: The author was supported to attend FACT 2026 by ACMI and was a mentor with CEO Digital Mentoring Program which spawned this symposium and was organised by ACMI and Creative Australia.
This was also published over on LinkedIn but nice to have it here too don't you think?
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