Dennis Del Favero is an Australian artist and academic. His media, video, and photographic art have been widely exhibited in solo exhibitions in museums and galleries such as Sprengel Museum Hannover, ViaFarini Milan, Neue Galerie Graz, and ZKM Karlsruhe, as well as in major group exhibitions, including the Sydney Film Festival, ISEA, International Film Festival Amsterdam, Biennial of Seville, and the Battle of the Nations War Memorial, Leipzig (a joint project with Jenny Holzer). Professor Terry Smith, in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Art, states that “[Del Favero’s] work… takes interactivity to a new technological level… a depth of and enablement not matched in other art…”. Professor Peter Weibel, the late CEO of ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, notes that his work is “a tour de force, a world-first cinematic innovation that integrates artificial intelligence with the technologies of interactivity, 3D, colour, sound and the moving image.”
Del Favero’s collaborative research programme comprises work across the fields of art, humanities, engineering, and science, exploring experimental interactive aesthetics using advanced AI visualisation systems. As Executive Director at the ARC, he was responsible for the Humanities and Creative Arts division, overseeing its policies, programmes, and $250M annual budget. Across the ARC, he initiated and implemented the Interdisciplinary Assessment and Policy Framework and the industry-continuous Linkage Funding scheme. As Director of UNSW iCinema, he has delivered a range of cutting-edge, competitively funded projects.
He is currently delivering iFire, an artificially intelligent visualisation system that depicts immersive interactions with unpredictable extreme fire scenarios to enhance preparedness, such as those of Los Angeles in 2025 and the Australian Black Summer of 2019/2020. It is being deployed for Fire and Rescue NSW’s first responder training academy, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s online platforms, CSIRO/Data61’s simulation lab, and exhibition programmes for ISEA and Düsseldorf/Cologne Open.