About
BluHeron Interactive is a creative technology studio based in London and Hamilton, Ontario. We design and produce immersive and interactive public artwork, and we build the software that supports it. Our work has been commissioned by municipalities, arts councils, galleries, festivals, and community organizations across Ontario, and has been installed in galleries, market squares, sculpture gardens, a landfill site, and the middle of a street festival.
The studio brings together a long practice in community-engaged public art and a background in immersive media and software development. That range sits inside a single small team rather than across a chain of contractors, which means the people who design a project are the people who build it and the people on site when it opens.
The structure is deliberate. We are not a design consultancy that hands over a concept, and not a development shop waiting for a specification. Because one team carries a commission from proposal to closing night, the work is scoped against real conditions — weather, crowds, accessibility requirements, and public budgets — from the first sketch.
Current work
beacbeac, our platform for accessible, place-based stories, is deployed this fall at Ability First Fest and Supercrawl in Hamilton and at Nuit Blanche London. The studio is a business member of the Canadian Museums Association, provides web development and hosting for the Mississauga Arts Council, and has delivered development work for Centre[4]Arts.
Participation is the artwork, not a survey attached to one. Navitas required two people pumping in tandem to move water across Hamilton. Jump Around carried the City of Hamilton's public art consultation inside a game show and returned the results to the department.
beacbeac was co-designed with Blind, Low Vision, Deaf, Deafblind, and disabled community members. Access requirements shape the brief rather than a remediation pass at the end of it.
Navitas threads 2,000 LEDs through reclaimed copper, aluminum, and wood. Concrete Canopy mapped the columns and window bays of a heritage façade rather than hanging a screen in front of it. Existing materials and existing structures are the starting point.
Our digital services — websites, hosting, maintenance, and accessibility audits — are offered to arts councils, galleries, studios, and festivals. Staying inside the sector keeps the studio close to the organizations our public work is made with.
Co-founder · Artistic director
A freelance artist and artistic director for three decades, Chris has led 27 community-engaged public art projects across Ontario, working with municipal culture, waste, and water departments. He holds a BA in Studio Art from McMaster University and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where his research focused on social practice and community interaction as a way of understanding our connection to the natural environment. His practice centres on bringing people together — building connections, sparking conversations, and exchanging knowledge.
Chris is of settler ancestry, living on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
Co-founder · Technical Director
An immersive media artist and software developer, Alex art-directs and builds — from generative audiovisual installations such as Blue Noise and Concrete Canopy to the beacbeac platform, its apps and administration console, and the websites the studio maintains for arts organizations. His practice spans augmented and virtual reality, projection, and robotics, and he composes and performs experimental electronic music built on modular synthesis, presented at international festivals and conferences. He also leads workshops in generative visuals and sound art, and mentors emerging artists.