NEoN appointed Nathan Jones to develop a ‘Digital Arts Symposia Provocation’ that can push the boundaries of academic and arts-based conferences. Nathan explored how symposia around digital technology-driven art can be more accessible and animated, create more value for a broader range of participants, and play a better role in how we think about, publish and programme arts.

Nathan's major problem in this paper is that new media art processes, objects, and methodologies have become increasingly complex and “hard to grasp”. This problem is, in fact, an opportunity that can ‘spark a [new] public into being’, inviting us to rethink symposia and similar discursive activities at arts festivals towards the kinds of collectivity the world needs now.