Affective Computing | IA Gateway

Saturday, June 13, 2026 | 1 – 3PM 

Affective Computing is a mixed-media generative performance that explores how AI affects human connection. Utilizing technology such as LLMs, digital avatars, and digital communication devices the performance questions how technology has moved from being a facilitator of human-sourced communication towards being the source of thoughts and ideas, with humans acting as facilitators. This performance explores the potential apex of this progression, with layers of either creation or abstraction by technology; the humans involved are simply cogs in an artificial process.

The perfomance will run three times, with a duration of 20 minutes, followed by a Q&A.

Presented as part of Toronto Games Week.

‍

About the Artist

Tristan Sauer is a new media artist and curator critically interested in the relationship between technology and capitalism. His work navigates the intersections between our digital and physical worlds, and what an inside-out look at our relationships with technology can reveal about the human condition. Working in multiple mediums but most closely with physical computing, sculpture, and extended-reality, Sauer often explores these topics through an afro-futurist lens imagining and critiquing techno-capitalism's impacts on our present and future realities.

‍

About IA Gateway

The InterAccess Gateway (IA Gateway) program facilitates low-barrier, no-cost access to gallery space for new media artists within our community. Gateway is an entry point; the term refers to network gateways, telecommunication devices that allow for the flow and translation of data between separate networks, an apt metaphor for the responsibility of organizations to provide resources and support to the artists in their community. IA Gateway was first held in 2024.

About Toronto Games Week

Toronto Games Week is a collective coordination of events organized independently by dozens of organizations, curators, companies, creators, and communities