Festival in Focus: EyeMyth Media Arts Festival

EyeMyth began as a gathering for the emergent, the in-progress, the hard to define. Over time, it has become a vital movement that champions NextGen storytelling from the Global South, and connects artists working at the edges of genre, geography, and technology. One of India’s most distinct media arts festivals, EyeMyth is known for its deep attention to process, plurality, and the spaces between mainstream and emergent forms. In a country where tech is everywhere but rarely this tender, EyeMyth makes room for the poetic, the glitchy, the not-quite-finished. You can walk in with a question—about machines, about stories, about the future—and find that someone else is holding the same question, just a tad differently.

We spoke to Tejas Nair, co-curator of EyeMyth, about how the festival has evolved, what it holds space for, and the role of process in a world speeding up. Here are some excerpts from an insightful conversation:

Back in 2011, when EyeMyth first took shape within the UnBox Festival, what was the gap you felt in the cultural landscape? What was the spark that made you believe India needed a media arts festival that blurred lines between genres, formats, and geographies?
The gap we felt was around celebrating work being done at the fringes and cutting edge of the media arts landscape. There weren’t many platforms genuinely supporting experimental work at the time. EyeMyth was designed as a celebration of more experimental and free-form media arts—work that was tech-driven, boundary-pushing, and unafraid to exist between categories. We saw incredible artists doing groundbreaking work but lacking spaces where that work could be seen, discussed, and valued for its experimental nature rather than its commercial viability.

It’s been over a decade now. When you look at how EyeMyth has become a fluid, future-facing platform, what are the things that have stayed true to the original spirit? And what parts have surprised you with how they’ve evolved?
I think we’ve always followed the path of practice—tracking how the journey of a media artist is evolving within both Indian and global contexts. We’ve remained committed to being a forum where artists and studios can share their experiments and thought processes, not just polished final projects. What’s surprised me is how this focus on process has actually made the festival more relevant as technology accelerates. When everything is changing so rapidly, the ability to think through problems and share methodologies becomes even more valuable than any single outcome.

This year’s edition feels especially layered with each day exploring a different frontier: local-global narratives, Gen-AI, and immersive worldbuilding. While curating these themes, what guides you the most—cultural shifts, artistic intuition, or emerging tech possibilities?
Gen-AI and generative work in general have created such a fast-paced and exciting landscape—things are shifting drastically almost daily. The way we’ve designed this year’s programme, we’re trying to cover a wide array of approaches across traditional, contemporary, and experimental styles. Worldbuilding has become the central focus of so many conversations across film, long-format content, short-format work, social media, and of course gaming. I’d say it’s a combination of all three forces you mentioned, but right now the technological possibilities are creating cultural shifts so rapidly that our artistic intuition has to work overtime to keep up and make sense of it all.

We’re all navigating this wave of generative AI and this festival seems to be leaning into it with eyes wide open. As someone curating at the intersection of art and machine, what excites you most about human-machine co-creation? And where do you feel we need to tread more carefully?
The excitement is largely built around this new wave of creative possibilities, but equally around the conversations it’s sparking—questions about impact, ethical conundrums, economic effects on creative practices, and several other complex issues that right now the entire media arts community is trying to unwrap in their own ways. What excites me most is seeing artists approach these tools not as replacements for human creativity, but as new collaborators that can push their work in unexpected directions. Where we need to tread carefully is ensuring these technologies amplify diverse voices rather than homogenise them, and that we’re having honest conversations about how they’re reshaping creative economies and labour.

What’s your favourite part of putting this festival together?
It’s largely about bringing together the media arts community in India. There’s incredible talent in this region, but often that talent gets deployed only in commercial advertising and brand-centric work. EyeMyth becomes a home for these artists to showcase their personal practices and passion projects—the work they’re doing when nobody’s asking them to sell anything. Watching artists connect with each other, see their peers’ experimental work, and realise they’re part of a larger creative ecosystem—that’s the magic that makes all the logistical chaos worth it.

 It’s beautiful to see a festival like EyeMyth bringing such diverse voices together, from indie game designers to indigenous technologists. But in a world obsessed with going global, how do you stay rooted in Indian storytelling and digital identities?
I think the work being done here is naturally rooted in our identities, but the Indian identity itself is this complex and beautiful mix of so many influences, traditions, and contemporary realities. I believe that complexity reflects in the work we showcase and build at the festival as well. Rather than trying to define what “Indian digital identity” should look like, we create space for artists to explore what it actually does look like in all its contradictions and multiplicities. The rootedness comes not from prescribing certain themes or aesthetics, but from supporting artists who are genuinely working from their lived experiences here.

Over the years, EyeMyth has hosted thinkers and creators from all corners of the creative-tech universe. Is there a particular moment, a conversation, or even a glitch that unexpectedly captured the true spirit of the festival for you?
What moves me most are the times when we see partnerships, collaborations, and projects that were seeded at EyeMyth actually coming to life months or years later as full-blown projects and exhibitions. There’s something powerful about realising that a casual conversation during a coffee break or a question asked after a presentation has grown into someone’s next major work. That’s when you know the festival is functioning as more than just a showcase—it’s actually nurturing the ecosystem it’s trying to celebrate.

What do you have on the horizon for EyeMyth after this edition?When the next edition comes in, who can be a part of this festival and how can someone be a part of this festival?
Our next edition is already planned for February 2026 in Delhi. The pace of change in this field means that by next year, we’ll probably be dealing with entirely new questions and possibilities, so part of our planning process is staying flexible enough to respond to whatever emerges while maintaining our core commitment to supporting experimental practice. We welcome artists, studios, designers, and media artists to reach out to us at [email protected] or through our Instagram page. We’re always looking for people pushing boundaries or exploring new ways of combining technology and storytelling—regardless of where they are in their career or what tools they’re using.

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