Dr Fazal Ali

Pro­vi­sion­al guardrails can­not per­ma­nent­ly fix a struc­tur­al mar­ket shift. The SARS-CoV-2 pan­dem­ic was “the great ac­cel­er­a­tor,” fast-track­ing the adop­tion of nascent tech­nolo­gies. It trans­formed lifestyles, work pat­terns, and busi­ness strate­gies. SARS-CoV-2 cre­at­ed an on­go­ing stream of fore­seen and un­fore­seen op­por­tu­ni­ties, chal­lenges, and costs, en­er­gis­ing both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive feed­back loops. Lock­downs con­densed years of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in­to months. The fu­ture that fol­lowed was pre­dictably dig­i­tal.

To­geth­er, the post-pan­dem­ic dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the present ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) tran­si­tion have re­shaped the cre­ative in­dus­tries. They have en­abled da­ta-dri­ven in­no­va­tion and new en­tre­pre­neur­ial dy­nam­ics.

These shifts changed Hol­ly­wood. Hol­ly­wood is not a place any­more. It is now a dis­persed net­work. The Net­worked Shift cre­at­ed by the US$110 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion by Para­mount Sky­dance of Warn­er Bros. Dis­cov­ery on Oc­to­ber 6, 2026, will pro­duce new prac­tices around many and var­ied in­for­mal dig­i­tal con­nex­ions, giv­ing rise to a “dig­i­tal by de­fault” net­worked set of prac­tices with AI as an un­der­car­riage.

The fu­ture work­force of cin­e­ma and TV will build seam­less cin­e­mat­ic worlds by dig­i­tal­ly stretch­ing the en­vi­ron­ment to look in­fi­nite, ex­treme, and his­tor­i­cal­ly ac­cu­rate by break­ing it down in­to mul­ti­ple dis­tinct pro­ce­dur­al depths.

The Arc­tic se­quence of Guiller­mo del Toro’s “Franken­stein” re­quired the crew to build a 130-foot-long ship in a Toron­to park­ing lot. The ground around the ship was cov­ered with props, and hun­dreds of feet of ar­ti­fi­cial snow blan­kets made from Sty­ro­foam and sil­i­cone.

Herne Hill Me­dia and In­dus­tri­al Light & Mag­ic lay­ered dig­i­tal en­vi­ron­ment ex­ten­sions over the park­ing lot to build out siz­able sheets of ice, glacial ocean wa­ter, and sad skies.

How can we use these tech­niques and tools to stream the Trinidad Car­ni­val as a live ex­pe­ri­ence us­ing Re­al-Time En­gines that ren­der 3D graph­ics, vir­tu­al sets, and aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty (AR) ob­jects as the event hap­pens?

Screen Economies re­quire us to treat the cre­ative in­dus­tries as a cre­ative ecol­o­gy that re­lies on a “net­work mod­el of gov­er­nance.” This bor­rowed busi­ness-stud­ies con­cept refers to ideo­graph­ic forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, co­or­di­na­tion, and col­lab­o­ra­tion among cre­atives.

Sov­er­eign states in the West In­dies may find it use­ful to map and mea­sure the val­ue net­work that em­anates from lo­cal net­works across re­gion­al cre­ative ecolo­gies. Val­ue net­works of cre­atives work­ing in sound tech­nol­o­gy, an­i­ma­tion, haute cou­ture, and prêt-à-porter cloth­ing re­ly on a flex­i­ble, net­worked free­lance mi­cro-busi­ness work­force in a volatile and un­cer­tain mar­ket­place.

This net­worked free­lance work­force re­quires a pre­cise un­der­stand­ing of net­work gov­er­nance. Net­work gov­er­nance in­volves an or­dered set of au­tonomous busi­ness­es and non-prof­it en­ter­pris­es that cre­ate prod­ucts and ser­vices, us­ing im­plic­it, open-end­ed con­tracts to adapt to the un­fore­seen and the un­planned, and to co­or­di­nate and safe­guard ex­changes.

The Amer­i­can film in­dus­try is a note­wor­thy ex­am­ple of a net­worked free­lance work­force. Sim­i­lar­ly, in the West In­dies, the cre­ative in­dus­tries sec­tor con­sists pre­dom­i­nant­ly of mi­cro busi­ness­es and sole traders.

To cap­ture clear close-up di­a­logue a foot away from the ac­tors’ faces and mute the sound of reels dur­ing the film­ing of The Odyssey, net­worked free­lancers en­gi­neered spe­cialised mir­ror se­tups.

These en­gi­neer­ing in­no­va­tions are not far from the en­gi­neer­ing mar­vels of Min­shall’s Fly Fly Sweet Life, Man Crab, Callaloo Danc­ing Tic Tac Toe Down the Riv­er, the Mer­ry Monarch, and Saga Boy. The pup­peteers walk­ing be­neath these ki­net­ic sculp­tures bring the mo­biles to life, and the sculp­tures, in turn, bring life to the mas­quer­aders car­ry­ing them. The spir­it of car­ni­val is re­leased on an over­whelm­ing scale, and you see the mu­sic. This is the “Mas of Min­shall.” It is to it­self what it is.

The dom­i­nance of sole traders and mi­cro busi­ness­es in the cre­ative in­dus­tries sug­gests that cre­atives tend to co-lo­cate in cre­ative clus­ters of di­verse, spe­cialised busi­ness­es that re­ly on ac­cess to spe­cialised labour and skills. The “Mas Mak­ers” of the West In­dies are gig work­ers. They trav­el across the arch­i­pel­ago, the UK, and the Mid­dle East to bend wire and make cos­tumes for Sug­ar Mas, Spice­mas, Not­ting Hill, Crop Over, Dubai Car­ni­val, and Junkanoo.

What is need­ed now is a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry fu­tur­ing and spec­u­la­tive de­sign op­por­tu­ni­ty to build a set of provo­types that scaf­fold con­ver­sa­tions about pos­si­ble dig­i­tal-fes­ti­val fu­tures for Trinidad’s tra­di­tions, in­clud­ing Ram­leela, Phag­wa, and Hosay.

Spec­u­la­tive dig­i­tal de­signs sen­si­tive to clus­ters of so­cial, his­tor­i­cal, hu­man, eco­nom­ic, and tech­ni­cal con­di­tions that can en­able or in­hib­it da­ta-dri­ven in­no­va­tion are a fresh im­per­a­tive amid the as­cent of AI in for­mer plan­ta­tion so­ci­eties.

Provo­types, dig­i­tal or phys­i­cal de­sign arte­facts, can spark deep dis­cus­sions, chal­lenge hid­den as­sump­tions, and ex­plore fu­ture sce­nar­ios. Un­like stan­dard pro­to­types, which test if a func­tion­al so­lu­tion works, provo­types test how peo­ple feel, what they ex­pect, and where cur­rent norms or sys­tems fail.

Dur­ing this struc­tur­al mar­ket shift and AI tran­si­tion, the aim is to evoke pos­si­ble fu­tures for dig­i­tal and da­ta, and their po­ten­tial role in dri­ving Dig­i­tal Cre­ative Economies with­in Trinidad’s di­verse Fes­ti­val Tra­di­tions.

Dr Fazal Ali com­plet­ed his Mas­ter's in Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He was a Com­mon­wealth Schol­ar who at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Hugh­es Hall; the Provost of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go; the act­ing Pres­i­dent of UTT; and the Chair­man of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He is the Pres­i­dent of NI­HERST and an ex­ter­nal ser­vices con­sul­tant with the IDB.