Craig Swann

Building at the edge of
AI, creativity,
and culture.

For three decades I've been creating things ahead of their time - from early web experiments and online music platforms to generative art systems, creative tools, and Australia's most loved startup festival. Today I work across AI-native creative systems, world-building, film, music, live experiences, and cultural strategy.

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Right now

What I'm building.

SOUTHSTART is the foundation - not just as an annual event but as cultural infrastructure. A gathering point for founders, investors, creatives, and the people actively shaping what comes next in Australia and beyond.

In 2026, I joined as Co-Director of The Australian AI Film Awards - the country's first national awards program for AI filmmakers and creators. It's the bridge between the community-building instinct behind SouthStart and the AI creative practice I've been developing. Launching Brisbane, August 2026.

Alongside that, WYRLD is a world-building exploration I'm developing for the generative age - tools and systems for building rich, consistent creative universes with AI as the instrument, not the author.

And every day, I make something. That practice runs through generative art, world-building experiments, music, and moving image - including an Official Selection in the Runway GEN:48 competition. The output is the proof of concept.

Check out my now page for more →

WYRLD.AI

A world-building framework for the generative age.

Explore WYRLD.AI

I built Looplabs because I believed everyone deserved access to a music studio. Not a toy - a proper studio, in a browser, in 2001. It became the web's first online music platform, used by millions. WYRLD is the same instinct, a generation later - exploring a different medium.

I'm experimenting with what it looks like to scaffold entire creative worlds using AI - being early, playing with the tools, and reimagining what world-building could become in the near future. The same way Looplabs asked "what if everyone had a music studio?", WYRLD asks "what if everyone had a world studio?"

It's less a product and more an exploration of the medium - designing the tools, testing the boundaries, and seeing what emerges when you give world-building the same accessibility that Looplabs gave music.

Creative R&D

Working with the medium.

I've been inside AI video since it first became possible - not to become a filmmaker, but to understand what the medium actually is. AI-generated moving image isn't cinema with a different toolset. It's something new, still writing its own grammar, and the only way to understand it is to be in it early.

These are research objects as much as films. The question I'm working on: where does watching end and participating begin? AI is what makes that boundary dissolve - and moving image is where that tension is most visible right now.

Both films below are entries in GEN:48 - the web's first generative AI film competition, run by Runway. Participants receive a brief and have exactly 48 hours to create and deliver a complete short film. No extensions. Solara was a finalist.

Solara

2024 · GEN:48 AI Film Finalist

2025

Anemoia

2025 · AI Short Film

More moving image on YouTube →

30+ years of prototyping the future

Always early. Never waiting.

I was a preteen SYSOP running a BBS in the 1980s, then left university when the web arrived because the frontier felt more important than the plan.

Since then I've spent 30+ years building at the edge of technology and creativity.

In the 1990s, I founded CRASH!MEDIA, an award-winning interactive studio exploring new forms of digital experience.

Then came Looplabs, one of the earliest online music creation platforms, where millions of people made music in the browser. It won a Webby, and Steve Jobs personally demoed it during the Safari launch.

Steve Jobs demoing Looplabs at Safari browser launch

"Another site I want to show you. This is really fun. This is a flash site - to the max. If you haven't seen this one, it's really fun. You can just make music here."

- Steve Jobs, Safari Browser Launch

In 2017, I moved to Australia and took over SOUTHSTART as co-owner and creative director, rebuilding and reshaping it into one of the country's key gathering points for founders, investors, creatives, and people shaping what's next.

Today that same instinct continues through AI, creative tooling, world-building systems, music, moving image, and cultural experimentation.

I don't write code. I work the way I always have - by feel, by taste, by stripping away everything that isn't the thing.

Get in touch

Let's talk.

If you're building at the frontier - in AI, creative technology, culture, or startup ecosystems - I want to hear from you. Especially if what you're working on doesn't have a name yet.

Mostly I'm after good conversations with people making interesting things · Creative direction · Speaking · AI Film Awards partnerships

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