March 15th 4 PM CT SXSW Austin, TX “This is Not a Person” Panel

July 12th, 2021 1:30 PM Games for Change Festival “Aesthetics and Empathy: Why Art Matters”

March 19, 2021 Panel “Aesthetics and Representation in the Affirmative Feminism Series organized by Maud Ceuterick is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie research fellow in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. Honored to be presenting with Rosalind Gill, Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies, City University London and Anna Backman Rogers, Professor of Film Studies and Co-founder of the journal MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, University of Gothenburg

March 17  2021 Featured Panel SXSW “Creating Empathy Through Volumetric Video” Making Emotional Connections With Volumetric Video – Hear from three seasoned creatives on the most effective way to make emotional connections through volumetric video with writer, director, and new media artist Illya Szilak; Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Capture Studios creative director Jason Waskey, and producer and Atlas V co-founder Antoine Cayrol.

February 2021 Artist’ talk at Barnard College, Columbia University

November 2019

Pitching Atomic Vacation at IDFA Forum, Amsterdam

October-November 2019

Designing Narratives for VR teaching class at Independent Film Producers’ Made In NYC Center

September 2019

Queerskins: a love story has London premiere at Victoria and Albert Museum

June 2019

Pitching at Sheffield Doc Fest, England

Talk on VR, Empathy and Embodied Cognition at Games for Change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiOsDUttE2s&t=1s

September 2018

VRFest MX Keynote presentation, installation and exhibition of Queerskins: a love story in Mexico City

LA Film Festival Installation and Showing Queerskins: a love story

Illya participates in Future Innovators Summit at Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria

August 2018

Queerskins: a love story installation at SIGGRAPH 2018 in Vancouver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVJ1sv13dlQ

June 2018

Monthlong Installation and VR exhibition at Toronto International Film Festival’s TIFF Lightbox Building Gallery. Opens June 2 to the public–hours 2-6 PM daily except Monday (closed).

May 2018

West Coast premiere of Queerskins: a love story with interactive installation at The Seattle International Film Festival

April 2018

Queerskins: a love story and an interactive immersive installation premieres at Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes.

August 2017

Very excited to be invited down to Mexico City to VR Fest MX with Cyril Tsiboulski to give a keynote and give a workshop on storytelling in VR at . The keynote is entitled What We Learned on Our Atomic Vacation: a Creator’s View of Storytelling in Virtual Reality.  I will post it when it’s done. As always, feel free to use and distribute, I just ask for attribution, and if possible, a link back.

3/13/2017 SXSW Panel Queering VR

Invited Speaker at Temple University, Tyler School of Art: Critical Dialogue series, November 12th, 2014

Invited Panelist for discussion on transmedia storytelling with D.J. Spooky and Rick Moody, The New School, NYC,  December 4th 6:30 PM

Key Note Speech:”Learning to Throw Like Olympia: E-lit and the Art of Failure”, University of Wisconsin, Millwaukee, Electronic Literature Organization Conference

Forward/Story Invitational Transmedia Storytelling Lab, May 16-18, 2014

And Now Festival, Boulder, CO  Friday, September 27, 2013 • 4:00pm – 6:00pm

CCCA ArtsWalk Festival, Hudson, NY, Sunday October 6, 2013 12-1:30pm