The Rise and Fall of the Alpha: Biometric Interactive Art Installation Launch – October 30 2026

What: SassyTuna Studio, the St. John's creative studio led by artist and filmmaker Julie Louise Lewis, will publicly launch The Rise and Fall of the Alpha at Signal Hill Campus, Emera Innovation Exchange on October 30 2026, with free public sessions open to all ages.

The Rise and Fall of the Alpha is a biometric interactive installation that uses a participant's own heart rate, breathing patterns, and motion, captured through a custom wearable sensing system and interpreted through a real-time sensor-fusion pipeline, to animate the extinct Newfoundland wolf in real time. It is built on a proprietary sensor-fusion pipeline developed in St. John's, and accompanied by a 26-minute documentary exploring the species, the science, and the Indigenous relational frameworks of kinship, reciprocity, and intergenerational accountability the project is grounded in, developed in ongoing partnership with Indigenous cultural consultants and artists.

Why: The October launch also serves as the project's FIRST public event, seeing responses that will inform ongoing research reporting to ArtsNL and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Organizers are conducting participant sessions throughout the day.

When: Friday, October 30 — 11:00 am-1:00 pm and 4:00-7:00 pm

Where: Signal Hill Campus, Emera Innovation Exchange , St. John's, NL Admission: Free, drop-in Each session takes a few minutes; participants wear a small heart-rate wrist sensor and watch the Newfoundland wolf respond to their own physiological state in real time.

Following its Signal Hill launch, the project tours internationally, including a residency with the Caselberg Trust in Otepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand, in late 2026, and a 2027 exhibition with Shoebox Arts in Los Angeles.

Who: SassyTuna Studio is the creative enterprise of J. Lewis & Co Ventures Ltd., led by Creative Director and Producer-Director Julie Louise Lewis, with 25 years of history in Atlantic Canada. The studio's practice spans biometric interactive art, documentary filmmaking, ecological advocacy, and community arts education, and also operates as a makerspace providing arts and coding education to regional youth and families through its programming.