IHxID Exhibition Panel — Art Thinking

Paige Johnson is a 6th generation Novocastrian, elected to City of Newcastle Council as a Labor candidate in the recent NSW local government elections. Paige is deeply committed to ensuring Newcastle is a smart, progressive, sustainable, and inclusive City. Paige works in local government as a senior civil engineer, responsible for managing billions of dollars in public infrastructure. Her leadership extends to the wider community, where she has an active part in the union movement and in civic advocacy and governance roles. With Paige’s recent election, she became the first out transgender woman elected to public office in NSW.

Phoenix is a Newcastle based teenager and High School student studying Philosophy, Computer Technology and Multimedia Engineering. He has grown up with the exponential advances in modern technology and is incredibly enthusiastic about what’s next. Phoenix is very focused on the effects of social media's development and how that is shaping society and our future. He recognises that this is not always a positive thing and, as a user and (hopefully!) future industry innovator, Phoenix is interested in engaging with how to make our digital future better. He wants to create what is not yet made and question what has already been said. When he isn’t gaming (or pretending to study), Phoenix can be found washing dishes in a Darby Street café or roaming Newcastle’s urban landscape with his mates.

Alex Morris is a writer, arts activator and content creator. Alex loves communicating in creative spaces whether it's marketing The Big Picture Fest, showcasing Maitland Regional Art Gallery or writing travel pieces for the Newcastle Herald. Earlier this year she started Common Groundalongside psychologists and philosophers, a collective attempt to bring people together to have controversial conversations despite political differences. Alex has written before about her addiction to social media and why she likes it. She got a Myspace at the age of 18 and never looked back, embracing several different platforms along the way. Despite loving social media, she's aware of its downsides: echo chambers, polarization, bad mental health and easy spread misinformation. You can read her wild thoughts including occasional poems and in-depth interviews by subscribing to her Substack, or, of course, following her on Instagram.

Walter believes the innate curiosity within each of us must not be crushed by formulaic life decisions. An enthusiastic and unrepentant child himself, he has thankfully persistently dodged a conventional career path.
Interviewed by the Powerhouse Museum shortly after hacking an anarchist collective as a teenager, he used to enjoy running home from school to see which global militaries had read his website on undisclosed methods of covert operating system detection.
Choosing instead of university to enter the workforce as a penetration tester, he soon found himself representing a transnational digital video systems joint venture co-pitching to the Australian Federal Police, demonstrating satellite systems to a subterranean New Delhi hotel function room full of starred Indian generals, signing deals with the mayor of Manila, and in early retirement was living in the Golden Triangle.
Traveling India he was headhunted to work on digital asset systems in 2011, building Kraken as the first employee and Chief Architect. After 8 eventful years of hardware R&D in China and now back in Sydney, he is preparing to open a highly autonomous factory mass producing food robotics in San Diego, capital commitments permitting. In his "spare" time he is a father and husband, occasional artist, inventor, and self-directed student, presently focused on radio theory and Aussie botany.

Niamh White is an interdisciplinary academic pursuing her PhD at Monash University and working as a research assistant on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project exploring young people’s selfie-editing practices and visual digital cultures. As a Millenial/Gen Z cusp, they grew up at the same time as the internet did and developed a keen interest in how young people navigate the messy and increasingly blurred spaces of online and offline worlds. Her research spans gender, sexuality, and youth; affect and embodiment within digital cultures, and queer and trans cultural production. Their doctoral project examines how young queer women and gender diverse youth learn about and engage with queer and trans history through social media.

James Street Plaza Activation