Meet our residents
Learn more about the creative practitioners and businesses that call ACMI X home.
Keep up to date with us on Twitter: @acmiXstudio
Videogames
Trash (Bin Chicken)
Bin Chicken Studios (Formerly 15 Minutes Of Game) is an interactive game design & programming studio. The developer behind upcoming indie title Trash, a beautifully crafted open-world survival craft game where strange and wondrous trash-based life thrives. Our vision is grounded in the previous experience of our founders, in Social Work, Environmental Advocacy and Graphic Design.
Let Me Out (Chase Profaca)
Chase Profaca is working on indie game, Let Me Out, a story-based game that focuses on the queer experience in many different aspects.
Innchanted (DragonBear Studios)
DragonBear Studios are a Melbourne-based collective of diverse, queer storytellers bringing meaningful tales through play.
Read our interview with the team here.
Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster)
Massive Monster is an indie game dev studio, creating games bursting with creativity and with a core focus on personality and play.
Check our podcast episode with Creative Director Julian Wilton about the business of making games.
Way to the Woods (One Pixel)
ant tan is an artist, creating video games. Currently he is working on Way To The Woods, with music from aivi & surrasshu.
Call of the Golden Valley (O’Saurus Studios)
O’Saurus Studios is an indie games studio led by Madeleine Clute focusing on unconventional narratives, human psychology, and unique settings. Their first game, Call of the Golden Valley, a first-person, female-protagonist mystery game set in the High Country of Victoria is in development.
Swords Narrative
Alexander Swords is an interactive narrative specialist working in writing and narrative design for games, and directing interactive adaptations from film, television, poetry, children’s books and more.
Video World/A Halloween Valentine (Things for Humans)
Things For Humans is an indie game studio focused on the intersection of pop-music and video games - most recently with the release of the award-winning halloween rhythm game 'Video World'. Things For Humans is now working on the sequel called 'A Halloween Valentine's.
Cam Rogers
Cam Rogers is a novelist, game writer and screenwriter. Cam has written for games such as Quantum Break and The Walking Dead: No Man's Land. He is currently the writer on Warframe.
Born in Australia, he's been a crime reporter, journalist, vampire extra, and stand-up comedian. He once spent weeks cutting up chicken in a steel room with a defecting Soviet weightlifter and almost got trapped working for the Yakuza in a bowling alley in Kyoto.
His novels include 'The Music of Razors' (written as Cameron Rogers) and 'Quantum Break: Zero State'.
Geek Latte
Geek Latte Pty is a studio established by three Swinburne graduates consisting of a combination of international and local students to form a home in Melbourne. They are dedicated to creating casual games that will captivate your senses and leave you craving for more.
ARC (Australian Roleplay Industry)
John Coleman is the principal organiser of ARC (Australian Roleplay Industry).ARC runs online and in-person tabletop roleplaying events all year and all over. We focus on encouraging game development in all forms, gender diversity and providing inclusive gaming environments
Michael Kerkow
Michael Kerkow is a software developer with a focus on game development in Unity3D. He's delivered software to a variety of platforms including Windows, iOS, Android and tethered VR and mobile VR.
Working with clients in a number of industries (including education, training, engineering, planning, events management and sports) he revel sin a development challenge and loves the collaborative inter-disciplinary nature of game development.
Film/TV
Vidya Rajan
Vidya Rajan is a comedian, screenwriter, and playwright. She is best known for writing the 2022 play adaptation of Melina Marchetta's 1992 novel Looking for Alibrandi. Rajan also wrote for and contributed to the ABC comedy series Why Are You Like This, SBS's The Feed and ABC's At Home Alone Together.
Haley Alea Erickson
Haley is an award-winning writer, director, comedian, filmmaker specialising in comedy and have a decade of experience in scripted and branded content.
Her most recent film, CALL ME MOMMY, was nominated for a Grand Jury Award and had its world premiere at SXSW in March 2023 and won Best Comedy at Academy Award qualifying festival HollyShorts. The film is a proof of concept for a feature film script that was trending on the Black List at the end of 2022.
Xanthe Dobbie
Xanthe Dobbie is an Australian artist and filmmaker. Working across on- and offline modes of making, their practice aims to capture the experience of contemporaneity as reflected through queer and feminist ideologies. Drawing on humour, pop, sex, history and iconography, they develop shrines to a post-truth era. Xanthe is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT University focusing on interactive digital art. Their artwork 'The Long Now (2022)' is currently being exhibited online here. Their work 'Eidolon' is a finalist in the Digital Art Prize which is open for public voting here.
Tony Coombs (Harvest Pictures Group)
With deep experience in international markets across film and television production, distribution and project management, Harvest Pictures Group brings countless hours of commercial broadcast television and feature film expertise. From story premise consulting and defining an audience, pre-production planning, budgeting, production and distribution all the way through to release, we are a disciplined and experienced team that is creatively driven for strong commercial outcomes.
Kimberly Summer
Kimberly Summer is a freelance WOC director working with both artists, not for profits, as well as large brands across Australia. Her work centres on highlighting diverse artists and their stories - told through documentary, content and short form works.
Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC)
Australia’s premier event for documentary, factual and unscripted screen content.
Dave Cartel
Dave has worked in storytelling for 20 years as a writer and director. Throughout this time, he has applied these skills to a wide variety of mediums, including television, video games, online, film, music videos, and podcasts.
Dave works across genres but has a passion for comedy, whether it’s scripting big laughs for broad audiences, crafting compelling stories for narrative comedy, or employing humour to bring humanity to darker tales.
Dave is currently developing hid first game called Amateur Canoe Club, an adventure that explores the challenges of forming friendships in adulthood.
GGG Films
GGG Films is a team of three best friends who live and breathe stories. Gabrielle McLeod, Greta Nash and Gillian Crosby have been working on films together since they were teenagers, which is why they have such a strong connection to honest stories about the highs and lows of adolescence.
Jesse Vogelaar
Jesse is a writer & director in Melbourne. His films have screened in competition at Flickerfest, Palm Springs, the Sydney Film Festival. His short, "Taxi!", won best experimental film and the 2018 ATOM awards and he created award winning webseries, "Pull My Finger", starring Ben Russell. He has directed commercials and content for brands like Museum's Victoria, Lenovo, JBL - music videos for labels like Future Classic and Mushroom Group.
Yvette Turnbull
Yvette is a multidisciplinary designer working across live performance, theatre, festival installation and film.
Yvette is ultimately a communicator. Her work is highly concept driven, she works collaboratively to stage ideas. Each project is an opportunity to realise a holistic environment, building a world around each concept with great care and attention to detail.
She makes work that is honest, accessible, and indulges in imaginative play.
Lewis Mulholland
Lewis is a writer, award-winning actor, filmmaker and joker.
He co-created and starred in the online series, Loving Captivity, which won several awards including; Best Web Series/Pilot at London International Web & Shorts FF, Best Dramedy at Seoul WebFest and Best Actor and Best Concept at the British Web Festival. Lewis is the man behind the rapper and beloved (albeit, easily forgotten) web-series, Creamy Boy. His first short, On The Ward, was shortlisted for Tropfest and nominated for Best Film at ReelGood FF.
Lewis worked on top-secret films with major studios as a Writer’s Assistant to Chris McKay (Lego Batman). He worked with Sarah Scheller and Alison Bell on The Letdown Season 2 airing on ABC TV (Australia) and Netflix.
Lewis writes comedy and drama. His work often features toxic men because he hopes that laughing at ourselves can build a better society.
Media Mentors
Media Mentors Australia, set up by long-time media professionals Denise Eriksen and Esther Coleman Hawkins, aims to help creatives create through mentoring, workshops and networking events.
Eva Otsing
Eva Otsing is an Estonian born and raised visual artist and filmmaker who has lived in Naarm (Melbourne) since 2014. She mostly works with musicians and artist, but has also created documentation for various art organisations in Australia as well as internationally. Eva holds two filmmaking diplomas from the Baltic Film School (Tallinn University) and a BA with Honours in Film Studies from London Metropolitan University.
Mondo Studio Films
Mondo Studio Films is a Melbourne based production company helmed by Writer/Director, Ruth Borgobello and Producer, Davide Giusto, both driven by a passion to tell international stories that harness the power of storytelling to make a difference in the world.
Madeleine Galea
Maddy is an actor and producer based in Melbourne, working in theatre, film and television. She is one half of the production company Identical Stranger and a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild in the USA.
Alistair Baldwin
Alistair Baldwin is a TV writer, director, playwright & comedian. His TV writing credits include The Weekly, Hard Quiz, At Home Alone Together and Get Krack!n (which he also stars in as ‘Matthew the PA’). Alistair served as Head Writer for Live & Proud! (the official global broadcast of the Sydney WorldPride Opening Concert) and ABC’s ReFrame (a 60 minute TV special marking International Day Of People With Disability, which he also hosted).
Alistair has provided narrative development services across a number of projects, including Amazon Original series Deadloch, Stan Original series Year Of and SBS Digital Original Latecomers. In 2022 Alistair also made his directorial debut on Latecomers which screened at Series Mania in Lille, France, and won the Screen Diversity & Inclusion Network Award at the 2023 SPA Awards.
Jason Christou
Jason Christou is a creator/writer/director who tells stories infused by his Greek-Cypriot and Austrian/Slovenian descent across film, TV, documentary, interactive and games. He is a current Creative Victoria Creators Fund recipient for his interactive series/game for change WE THE JURY.
Neil Triffett
Neil's debut feature EMO the musical premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival, screened at the Berlinale, Edinburgh Film Festival, and Toronto's Inside Out Film Festival, and has been screened on Netflix and Stan.
Neil is currently in development on several feature films, TV shows, web content, and contributes creatively to several Youtube channels.
Path To Audience (Bridgette Graham)
Path to Audience is a Melbourne-based entertainment marketing consultancy which provides services to the Australian screen industry in audience discovery & analysis, market positioning and the development of sales and marketing materials. Our mission is to make studio quality audience insights accessible to independent producers, with the goal of helping to create a more consumer focused and diverse local screen industry.
Creative Technologists/Artists/Art Organisations
Jen Valender
Jen Valender is an Australasian artist who was born in Aotearoa and is based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice investigates methods that compress complex experiences, histories and ethical dilemmas into simple gestures through projection, moving image, sound, sculpture and performance. Grounded in the cinematic, her artwork is inspired by wit, material conditions, conceptual paradoxes, poetic problematics and a resolute blurring of the art/life dichotomy.
Marc-O-Matic
Marc-o-Matic is an independent multidisciplinary Artist, Animator, Director and Creative Technologist. Combining a mix of traditional illustrative and storytelling disciplines with digital and immersive tech to create interactive storytelling experiences across Augmented and Virtual Reality.
Prototypical Labs (William Truscott)
Prototypical Labs is an emerging creative technology consultancy that specialises in rapid development of any software –weird or wonderful.
Our focus is using bleeding edge technology to create engaging and user-centric experiences. The team has deep experience in Unreal Engine, VR, web and things no one seems to have heard of.
It's rare to find a piece of technology we haven't worked with; or an industry we haven't worked in.
Ben Houghton
Ben Houghton is a Melbourne based composer and audio designer. Working with a combination of traditional instrumentation, sample-based sounds, field recordings, and electronic textures, Ben creates a unique palette for each project to enhance narrative and create emotional connection.
Ben specialises in adaptive audio systems for games and brings a wide range of creative and technical skills to game audio from years of producing and performing electronic music. Currently working with O’Saurus Studios on their game Call of the Golden Valley, Ben has worked on short films, theatre productions and podcasts before finding his home in game development.
ATOMVic
ATOMVic is the Victorian chapter of the national organisation Australian Teachers of Media Incorporated (ATOM). ATOM is an independent, not-for-profit, professional association that has been promoting the study of media and screen literacy for over 50 years. Our goal is to empower students, teachers, parents, and film enthusiasts to analyse and better understand the screen products we enjoy.
Performing Lines VIC
Performing Lines produces provocative contemporary performance by Australia’s most audacious independent artists. They champion the unconventional, the marginal, the rebellious and the new to ensure the breadth and plurality of Australia’s creative potential is represented and celebrated.
Isonomic
Isonomic is a leading mixed reality & training practice based in Sydney & Melbourne creating immersive experiences for training and special projects. In 2018–19 Isonomic delivered the most complex holographic experience built globally for the metro rail extension project in Sydney.
Castiglione Arts & Culture
Castiglione Arts & Culture is a touring management company dedicated to promoting live concerts and touring exhibitions throughout Australia and Asian capitals.
David Gagliardi
As an independent creator, David produces his own multi-discipline, large-scale live works for national and international audiences.
Since his first commission in 2002 for BBC television, David, a multi-instrumentalist, has composed for multiple forms and genres with achievements including over 30 placements on US television. David is also a well respected songwriter and recording artist most recognised for the internationally successful post-rock band LAURA.
Emile Zile
Emile Zile is an artist. He is completing his practice-based PhD at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre RMIT, writing on mediation, performance and the expression of self online. His recent performances have been presented at NGV Triennial Melbourne, Bleed Online ArtsHouse Melbourne / Campbelltown Arts Centre and LIMA Amsterdam. His work is profiled in Australiana to Zeitgeist: an A to Z of Australian Contemporary Art (2017) published by Thames and Hudson and The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art (2020).
Experimenta
Experimenta are dedicated to commissioning, exhibiting & touring contemporary art driven by technology. They present major touring exhibitions, partnerships with like-minded provocateurs, hold talks and symposiums, develop public programs and advocate on behalf of the sector. Their programs redefine what art can be, embracing the practices of bio art, creative coding, robotics, data-driven works, virtual and augmented reality.
Insite Arts
Insite Arts is an experienced creative team of arts professionals working to create, produce, manage, tour and promote the work of high calibre contemporary performing artists in arts projects that are innovative, excellent and outstanding within the global industry. Insite operates across a wide marketplace, collaborating with emerging and established artists and partners in high level professional ventures that engage participants and audiences across cultural and national boundaries.
Previous residents
Liz Baulch
Liz is a filmmaker, producer, researcher and educator with experience across narrative and non-fiction projects. Liz is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT University and is interested in all things home movies. Her project involves working with her family image archive as found footage, to reuse and recontextualise personal amateur images into works for public audiences.
Chelsea Cassio
Screenwriter Chelsea Cassio has worked with many of Australia's most prominent production companies across numerous television productions, including shows such The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Secret Bridesmaids Business and Miss Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries. Chelsea's original television concepts are in active development with Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning company Hoodlum, Princess Pictures, Easy Tiger, CK Artists and Atlantic Nomad Productions (Los Angeles).
Double Jinx
Double Jinx is a creative animation & motion graphics design studio. They create engagement and wonder through video.
Collaborating between their team and yours, you'll get the best possible result; a high quality unique video that does what it’s meant to do.
Exhibitionist
Exhibitionist is a multidisciplinary collective of digital arts workers. They seek to create new models and formats for how the arts community can engage with the digital and explore ways to create alternate frameworks for the collaboration, creation and dissemination of artistic work.
The GBiennale
The GBiennale is a major cultural event which places outstanding and significant cinema, art, theatre, dance, music, architecture and fashion housed in rotational instances from local, national, and international contributions. Its ethos is born from a need for greater cultural innovation from hybrid online and physical events through to present quirky, risky, vibrant, thought-provoking and enriched projects within the seven nodes of celebration.
Heroine Productions
Heroine Productions is a boutique production company based in Melbourne, Australia and founded by writer/director/producer Libby Butler.
Libby co-created and directed the acclaimed web series Loving Captivity, which won Best Series and Best Director at the 2021 London International Web Fest.
Having cut her teeth as a playwright and then in-house on serial drama, Libby is now focused on developing original work for television and film. She is currently undertaking a Film Victoria Writer’s Placement on Season 2 of Ms. Fisher’s Modern Mysteries. Writing credits include The Heights, Neighbours, and acclaimed web series Erinsborough High, which she also script-produced. She’s currently developing an original one-hour drama series with CJZ and an adaptation of Nick Earls’ seminal 90’s novel, Zig Zag Street.
Jacinta Keefe Photography
Jacinta is a proud Wiradjuri woman, who specialises in all things creative. She runs Jacinta Keefe Photography and has a passion for live music and events.
Lean Filmmaking
Lean Filmmaking helps indie filmmakers save time, money and energy by taking advantage of surprising - often counterintuitive - strategies to dramatically improve the filmmaking process. Creative agitators and siblings, Kylie Eddy and David Eddy, have combined their filmmaking experience and agile coaching expertise to re-imagine the development, production and distribution of independent films in an uncertain world. The Art of Lean Filmmaking: An unconventional guide to creating independent feature films - available now in paperback or ebook.
Memento Media
Memento Media are redefining how families discover, capture and celebrate family history with multi-generational, living, family archives.
OZ AFRICAN TV
OZ AFRICAN TV are Australia’s first platform to showcase African diaspora on Australian TV. We link birth, interest and heritage highlighting positive stories with focus on socio economic contribution and the affirmative impact this has on the community.
Plympton
Plympton is a literary studio that innovates in digital publishing. We passionately believe publishing is a craft — from the design, to the prose, to the reading experience — and are eager to move the needle. We’ve worked with many award-winning authors, including Namwali Serpell, Dan Chaon, Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Ruth Ware, Alexander Chee, Alice Hoffman and Jane Smiley. You can find a full list of them here.
Shaun Wilson
Shaun Wilson is an Australian artist, film maker, writer, and educator who for the past 30 years has made socio-political work about memory and places. He has exhibited and screened in over 200 venues.
In 2021, Shaun is a resident at ACMI-X investigating vintage 8mm home movies and a senior lecturer in the School of Design, RMIT University.
Tammy Honey
Tammy Honey is an Australian artist who for the past 25 years has made work about memory and pop culture aesthetics. She has exhibited and screened in numerous countries and venues including the TATE Modern, Gallery of Modern Art, ACMI, CAST, FACT Liverpool, SCOPE Art Fair Basel, Mermaid Arts Centre, and the Dundee Arts Centre, UK to name a few.
Yo City
Yo CiTY exists in your city wherever you are in the world to champion the BIPOC experience within contemporary society through Music and Art.
Interested in becoming an ACMI X resident?
The ACMI X Resident Membership provides ongoing tenancy to individuals, organisations or institutions that seek a permanent office space and associated benefits, including professional development programs and networking events. Expressions of Interest are now open for subsidised residencies in 2021.