Jonny Ostrem is a creative technologist, visual artist and filmmaker working in Vancouver, BC. He manipulates networked systems to support broad applications of new media with an experimental ethos — utilizing real-time engines, sensors, and simulation. He builds and inhabits virtual spaces built with WebXR, Unreal and Unity, creating interactive artworks and award-winning spaces that explore in the process of hybrid physical and virtual worldbuilding.
Ostrem’s experimental animated work has shown in exhibitions across Canada, including New Forms Festival, Ottawa International Animation Festival, GIRAF Film Festival and Les sommets du cinéma d’animation de Montréal. Since 2012, he’s worked with Stan Douglas to excavate Vancouver history with detailed 3D reconstructions. The work finds multiple outlets, seen in the iOS app Circa 1948 (NFB), the play Helen Lawrence (Canadian Stage) and large format prints displayed in galleries such as Victoria Miro (London), Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh), Haus Der Kunst (Munich), David Zwirner Gallery (New York) and in 2022 - at the Venice Biennale.
In 2019 Jonny co-founded Inter/mediate Arts Society with Kiran Bhumber and Alanna Ho - a non-profit focused on diversifying the field of interactive technology. Intermediate Arts Society’s mission is to produce effective, accessible, and non-hierarchical workshops that encourage learning through play.
Jonny is the Director of Z-Space Arts and Technology Society: a non-profit and collective in Gastown – Vancouver, BC,. The space was founded in 2015 with members in the fields of interaction, motion design, animation and art.