MAXmachina is a lab where storytellers, artists, scientists, and creative technologists expand live performance, creating work that uses science and technology to explore the promise and peril of our rapidly changing world. Projects include music, dance, experimental and immersive performance.
APPLY NOW
Please apply with your project by April 18th.
Media Art Xploration is inviting proposals for our 2025/26 MAXmachina laboratory program for works in dance, theater, music, experimental performance, as well as immersive pieces incorporating live activation. Past works have included interactive installations, mixed reality performance, art works implementing scientific research, and more analogue pieces interrogating the promise and peril of our increasingly technologized world.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
We like weird ideas that do not fit into categories and familiar ideas made unfamiliar. We appreciate a simple story told well and the use of traditional forms to illuminate new facets of science and technology also aligns with our mission. We hope to create critical conversations informed by science that encourage expansive and imaginative ways of thinking.
WHAT WE PROVIDE
Our MAXmachina laboratory program feeds our 2025 – 2026 season which includes:
- Four laboratory productions; as part of the development process each work will receive a salon presentation which includes a preview of the work, as well as three-way conversations between artist, scientist, and audience, designed to maximize meaningful feedback and reflection.
- Each project will receive a stipend of up to $5,000; additionally, each work will receive production support suited to the size and scale of the piece. Support is tailored to each project’s unique needs and may include access to rehearsal and performance space, equipment, software, technical staff, and fees for additional creative collaborators (compensated at a standardized industry rate starting at $30/hr).
CRITERIA
- We support work at various phases of development but projects must be past the initial concept or planning phase.
- Projects must include a live component.
- Projects must interrogate or integrate technology or science in some way.
- Projects cannot have been previously performed in New York City.
MILESTONES
Artists will need to abide by the MAXmachina timeline and submit progress reports.
Participants will be in collaborative conversation with MAXstaff to ensure production needs are met in a realistic way.
SUPPORT
MAXlive also provides support in production management, stage management, dramaturgy, lighting, and technical direction during the workshop period and public performances. We are based in New York City and, if necessary, MAXlive is able to negotiate limited subsidized travel and lodging options.
As an organization we value deep collaboration with the artists we work with and selected artists will be in dialogue with MAXlive staff and their network of scientific advisors and engineers who are curated to support the development of individual works. We are eager to reengage with artists within our community with whom we have previously worked; we find greatest success in deepening these longer-term relationships to generate creative and critically rigorous artistic work. If you have an idea that feels like a strong fit for our available resources and areas of focus, tell us about it.
We believe creating work includes presenting it to an audience to engage the public in the artistic and scientific process with the goal of impacting the world through art. We present MAXmachina works—in-progress and full productions—in our MAXlive fall and spring seasons. We have presented in venues in New York and beyond including BAM, Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, New York Live Arts, and Exploratorium, California Academy of Science, and Norton Museum reaching thousands of audience members, thereby amplifying informed constructive dialogue. We witness the benefits of the exchanges among artists, scientists, and audiences; artistic insight augmented by scientific specificity and vice versa lights a path toward greater awareness and agency for the audience. And, our audience’s interactive engagement inspires further growth of the work and its collaborators.