About NIDA X: Where story meets innovation
Supported by NIDA X Patrons, the Girgensohn Foundation.
This year’s submissions from NIDA alumni presented an amazing array of ideas and executions, ranging from XR narratives and immersive sound experiences to AI-driven audience dreamscape worlds and holographic characters. Following a competitive selection process, four alumni-led projects have each been awarded development funding, mentored support and access to equipment and facilities at NIDA.
NIDA X 2025 Grant Recipients
The four funded projects include:
Dream Sequence
Team: Thomas De Angelis (Writing for Performance, 2016), Sarah Hadley (Directing, 2018), Ang Collins (Writing for Performance, 2018), Clemence Williams (Directing, 2016), Sam Boneham and Isabella Debbage
Award: $20,000
An immersive, AI-powered installation where participants speak fragments of their dreams, which are instantly transformed into stylised visual sequences. These are projected in a darkened space, forming a communal dreamscape that blends machine interpretation with human imagination.
Drau ni Uto Hotel
Team: Emele Ugavule (Acting, 2014), Reuben Nicolas, Deanna Maladina, Fanni Fanzakas and Ephraim Frame
Award: $20,000
A contemporary song cycle blending XR and live performance to explore digital colonialism in Fiji. Set in a speculative universe, the story follows Kali, a young woman trapped in a virtual resort simulation, whose voice becomes the key to reclaiming her body and land.
Vital Signs
Team: Angela Sullen (Acting, 2016 and Voice, 2020) and Dino Dimitriadis
Award: $10,000
A solo performance using live medical equipment and projection technology to explore how Black, larger bodies are medicalised and made invisible. The work turns the body into both stage and storyteller, reclaiming autonomy and joy through immersive tech and personal narrative. This is the second development for this project.
The Shed
Team: Claudia Osborne (Directing, 2019), Solomon Thomas
Award: $10,000
The Shed is a work of docu-fiction that unfolds across two intertwined narratives: the “true story” of a mysterious event in 1930s rural Australia, and the contemporary experience of three performers attempting to reconstruct and make sense of that story on stage.
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This Program is made possible by NIDA X Patron
NIDA X is a program of the NIDA FUTURE CENTRE
