Same but Different: Experimentation and Innnovation in Desert Arts II provides a participatory forum for comparative exchange, networking and strategic collaboration across and between new aesthetic – same but different – desert art and media practice. What is at stake in the move to engage the past in the present through experimentation in Aboriginal desert arts? Why does innovation matter and how can it be supported? Same but Different was established in 2012 as a partnership between CCAP/NIEA COFA UNSW and Desart, the peak body for central, southern and western desert art centres. The initiative explores the creative possibilities of desert Aboriginal art and cultural traditions, with art understood not as artefact or object but rather as a process of cultural production. Through Same but Different, desert Aboriginal artists and media practitioners showcase their work and share stories of its production with one another and a growing audience of associated collaborative arts and media researchers and practitioners. The 2013 Same but Different forum in Alice Springs continues to support established and emerging cultural and project relationships between artists, media-makers, community art centres, independent artists, youth arts projects, media organisations, creative producers, curators, researchers and writers working across this dynamic field. Presentations will explore the conditions for the emergence of new forms and styles of Aboriginal art and why experimentation and innovation matter now.