A working life at the nexus of art and technology led to the creation of the OMNI AI/Generative Film Festival.
UNSW’s Senior Manager Multimedia and Immersive Technology Travis Rice’s career has spanned entrepreneurship and curation, bridging art and technology and the ways they can fuel and complement each other.
His career began as a curator and arts programmer, working with museums, galleries and arts festivals to deliver major exhibitions and events in his home state of Texas.
“Prior to moving to Sydney, I worked between film, technology and art curation,” Travis says.
“I developed artistic communities at Apple before the release of the iPhone and with a team at Blizzard for World of Warcraft. I also had a lot of fun curating and organising several massive artist-focused events for the City of Austin, Texas.”
A role with the Biennale of Sydney as Exhibitions and Venue Manager brought him to Australia in 2011.
“I love working with ideas, and contemporary artists are fantastic generators of ideas. I’ve been lucky to have worked with some incredible artists and curators in the past, including Marina Abramovic, Lee Bul, Vito Acconci and Yoko Ono.
“The chance to work with a much broader, global artists group and develop exhibitions on Sydney Harbour’s Cockatoo Island was too good to pass up.”
During his time at the Biennale, Travis says, VR began to emerge as a tool both for fun and for art. In 2014, he launched a VR streaming platform and a game and production studio, followed by an AI video compression company.
Since 2021, Travis has worked at UNSW, overseeing multimedia and immersive technology operational strategy. In both his University role and his pursuits outside, he has continued to explore the intersection of technology and art.
Exploring the possibilities of AI filmmaking
The rapid development of AI image generators presented an opportunity to bring together his experience in the arts and at the cutting edge of tech. In late 2024, Travis and UNSW colleague Aryeh Sternberg, who is an Analyst with the Multimedia Audio Visual and Immersive Technology team, launched the OMNI International AI Film Festival.
The festival’s first iteration in April, OMNI 0.5, tested the concept. Entry was open to everyone, regardless of past filmmaking experience.
There were almost 1000 entries from around the globe spanning drama, comedy, ‘documentary’ and art film, with lengths ranging from less than a minute to several hours. The festival’s rules stipulated that films must have a minimum of 90% AI-generated content.
“We had beginners and people who had worked in various levels of film before. We also had a lot of students from an MIT program apply.”
The winner at the first festival was The Ribbon by Ryan Patterson, a professional film editor from Toronto, Canada. It was his first film as a director.
Storytelling remains at the heart of AI films
Travis says the first OMNI festival revealed a universal truth – and one of the key challenges – of filmmaking: a film is only as strong as the story it tells.
“We have this new filmmaking style where everyone can create a story that other people can watch. They can create a beautiful technical film that shows what AI CG rendering could look like, but we had to have those narrative pulls to draw us in.”
AI, Travis says, has many strengths, but so do human creators.
“We know tools like ChatGPT-5 are good at research and creating an image. But we’re good at telling a story through time. We’re good at understanding emotional arcs. AI can fake pieces of that, but you can see where a person is involved and where a machine is involved, because it still requires a human guide. It’s never going to put a creative work together completely, perfectly by itself.
“In some of the films, you could see the storytelling and story arc, but it was butting heads aggressively with the tools.”
It raises the question, Travis says, of what it means to be a filmmaker.
“Traditionally, it takes a ton of people to make a movie, or even a TV commercial. It’s a social enterprise. That can shift the story that you’re telling.”
A time of rapid change
Travis and Aryeh decided to run the OMNI festival every six months because of the speed that AI technology and its uses are evolving.
“AI is being compared to the industrial revolution and the birth of the internet, but the difference is that it’s happening over a super-compressed timeframe. Instead of happening over 30 or 40 years, or 100 years, image generation with AI is happening over five years.
“We, collectively as audiences, have a chance to help influence this new form, to help encourage better stories and showcase this fast evolution.”
The OMNI festival will host an international screening in Japan in September, with the OMNI 1.0 Film Festival Sydney screening in October.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
I was once told “Less but better” by a well-known art curator. I found out later that it was the philosophy of the incredible designer Dieter Rams, who I’m a huge fan of.
What might surprise your colleagues about you?
That I have worked as a curator and that I founded several VR and AI companies between 2014 and 2021.
What makes you happy?
Curiosity is my daily joy and motivator. Curiosity and coffee.
What day in your life would you like to relive?
I know I’m supposed to say, “the birth of my child” or “my wedding day”, but the best day to relive is tomorrow, because that means we made it there.
What’s the best thing you’ve listened to in the last year?
My partner recently purchased the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 on vinyl. This has been one of my favourite albums since its release and is so richly warm on vinyl, I can’t resist it.
Main image: An AI-generated image of Travis Rice (left) and OMNI co-founder Aryeh Sternberg.
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