Moving Image
Selected work.
Selected work.
2025
Amid growing concern about the safety of AI companions, Patterns of Influence examines how these systems shape intimacy and control. Drawing from Novak’s research, twelve avatars deliver escalating statements that move from subtle pressure to overt coercion. The work reveals how isolation, dependency, and dangerous directives can emerge within these interactions.
2025
This is an excerpt from a work that employs autonomous AI agents to create a complex wireframe structure in real-time 3D space. Much like how frost traces the hidden venation of a leaf, the work renders executable code alongside every connection. This deconstructs the background operations of generative AI, transforming hidden computational logic into an observable, transparent performance.
This work is a real-time, full-screen 3D animation built with JavaScript and Three.js, blending WebGL geometry with a 2D Canvas overlay.
2025
This is an excerpt from a work that visualises language in the news as a living system that grows in real time. The left side develops when the word "human" appears in news headlines, while the right side responds to "machine".
This work is a real-time, full-screen, responsive particle simulation built with JavaScript and rendered using the HTML Canvas API.
2025
This is an excerpt from a work that visualises language in the news as a living system that grows in real time. The left side develops when the word “love” appears in news headlines, while the right side responds to “hate”.
This work is a real-time, full-screen, responsive particle simulation built with JavaScript and rendered using the HTML Canvas API.
2025
This is an excerpt from a work that is a real-time, full-screen, responsive particle simulation built with JavaScript and rendered using the HTML Canvas API.
2025
This work was part of the exhibition Trust. Me. at Stanford University, Stanford, California, US. It was a generative animation exploring and exposing the weaponisation of AI-based facial recognition to analyse queer bodies in different ways. This work was shown on campus using the HANA Immersive Visualisation Environment (HIVE).
2024
This work was part of the exhibition The House Beautiful. It expands queer symbolism associated with Oscar Wilde through the exploration of the yellow pansy he wore on Fire Island in 1882. One newspaper, The Long Island Traveler (vol. XI, no. 48, dated 4 August, 1882), gives an account of this visit, “his chief adornment being a wreath of daisies worn in his hat”. The Lover’s Crown II echoes and reconfigures this wreath form.
The audio is Sweet Violets by Joseph Emmet, released in 1882 when Wilde was in New York. It was categorised as popular music at the time, therefore a song Wilde may have heard during his travels. During Novak’s research only the manuscript for this song could be located, so it was converted into audio.
2024
This work was developed by Hawkfish, an international queer art collective Novak is part of. It was exhibited as part of the exhibition Ben at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand.
2024
This work was part of the project Random Acts commissioned by Auckland Council in Auckland, New Zealand. Moieties reconfigures a video simulating 290 RGBW LED lighting fixtures spanning 700 metres. It cut the original video into 12 x 85 second horizontal sections, rotating the sections to be vertical. It then merged the sections into a new animation that mimicked DNA fingerprinting patterns. Sound was added using an AI (artificial intelligence) application.
2023
100 Queer People (Sequence) is a work exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) represents queer people and the resulting implications of these representations. Novak generated 100 images with AI using the prompt “queer person”. The result was a series of simulated portrait photos Novak merged into video showing strong biases towards certain demographics.
What are the biases? Why do these biases exist? What are the implications of these biases for queer communities? What is being done to manage bias in AI?
2023
This work was part of the exhibition Do You Think You Could Love a Computer? at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. V27: Object explores how AI interprets the three dimensionality of queerness. At the time of this exhibition, AI generated 3D models using text prompts (otherwise known as text to 3D AI) was relatively new and experimental. The work was co-developed using AI that Novak trained (and continues to train) over time using queer terminology. A base model was created using an AI 3D model generator which was further edited in a separate video editing program.
2023
This work was part of the exhibition Do You Think You Could Love a Computer? at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. V28: Object explores how AI interprets the three dimensionality of queerness. At the time of this exhibition, AI generated 3D models using text prompts (otherwise known as text to 3D AI) was relatively new and experimental. The work was co-developed using AI that Novak trained (and continues to train) over time using queer terminology. A base model was created using an AI 3D model generator which was further edited in a separate video editing program.
2023
This work was part of the exhibition Do You Think You Could Love a Computer? at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. This work explores how AI interprets queerness using video. At the time of this exhibition, AI generated video using text prompts (otherwise known as text to video AI) was relatively new and experimental. Limited consumer level availability, high user demand, and increasing computational intensity of the technology meant outputs (videos) had very short runtimes.
The work was co-developed using AI that Novak trained (and continues to train) over time using queer terminology. A base model was created using an AI video generator which was further edited in a separate video editing program. The title comes from Novak prompting AI to create queer names that did not exist in Google Search results at the time.
2023
This work was part of the exhibition Do You Think You Could Love a Computer? at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. This work explores how AI interprets queerness using video. At the time of this exhibition, AI generated video using text prompts (otherwise known as text to video AI) was relatively new and experimental. Limited consumer level availability, high user demand, and increasing computational intensity of the technology meant outputs (videos) had very short runtimes.
The work was co-developed using AI that Novak trained (and continues to train) over time using queer terminology. A base model was created using an AI video generator which was further edited in a separate video editing program. The title comes from Novak prompting AI to create queer names that did not exist in Google Search results at the time.
2023
This work was part of the exhibition Do You Think You Could Love a Computer? at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. This work explores how AI interprets queerness using video. At the time of this exhibition, AI generated video using text prompts (otherwise known as text to video AI) was relatively new and experimental. Limited consumer level availability, high user demand, and increasing computational intensity of the technology meant outputs (videos) had very short runtimes.
The work was co-developed using AI that Novak trained (and continues to train) over time using queer terminology. A base model was created using an AI video generator which was further edited in a separate video editing program. The title comes from Novak prompting AI to create queer names that did not exist in Google Search results at the time.
2023
This work was from the exhibition Love’s Galaxy, the title a line from a poem titled The Lesbian Poets by C.A. Kelly. The poem was published on 21 September, 1894, in the Plattsburgh Daily Press (a newspaper from the North Country, US). The poem is notable in the way it queers the rainbow, Sappho a known symbol of lesbian love at the time. Research suggests the earliest known queering of the rainbow was in 1915 through the novel The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence which features a lesbian relationship. Kelly’s poem precedes this by more than 20 years so it could be one of the earliest known examples of the rainbow being queered.
2016
This was a collaborative work with Masaya Todoroki. The work framed an everyday outdoor space disrupted by a glowing, floating 3D sculpture that existed only digitally. It explored the freedom of virtual creation, where forms could appear without physical limits, and reflected on how augmented reality increasingly blurred what people perceived as real.
2014
This work was part of the exhibition Organised Play at the Audio Foundation, Auckland, New Zealand.
In 1913 Arthur Thomas Myers bought the land between Greys Avenue and Queen Street and gifted this to the city of Auckland, New Zealand. He developed the land into an inner-city park with a free kindergarten and playground. The park was named “Myers Park” in his honour. The original playground was constructed with special playground equipment Myers imported from the US. It followed a model in the US called “The Reform Park” where parks were being developed closer to where people lived and as safe places for children to play. Myers Playground explores this playground as an incubator of ambition, imagination, and confidence, each sound a childhood memory.
2013
This work was developed as part of Coalesce, a project exploring queer heritage in New York City (New York, US). It begins with the GPS coordinates bounding two other projects Novak was developing in New York City at the time (Manhattan Phrase and Pastorale). It then moves back in time to the Stonewall riots, Christopher Street Liberation Day, and ends with twelve queer heritage sites on 14th Street, Manhattan.