Today, the faint sound of tapping feet and harmonious synth is drifting through the Studio, as Guerilla Dance Project’s Laura Kriefman rehearses Kicking the Mic, folding Nth Camera into the mix. Wires and PCBs pile up around Kaspar, who is working on a robot kit for kids, our producers are travelling all over the place to talk about various things, and we welcome a new resident to the Studio.

Today, Laura Kriefman has been working with music technologist Lee, rigging the floor of the Studio meeting room with mics to convert the sound of tap dance into different instruments. They have been collaborating with Tim Kindberg, using Nth Camera software to film the trailer for their new show, Kicking the Mic by simultaneously filming Laura dancing from multiple angles on multiple devices.

Kaspar has been tweaking code to create the software for a robot kit for kids, called pi-bot. He has been designing drag-and-drop puzzle pieces to represent different pieces of code. The pieces can be arranged to program the robot to do different things, as part of an intuitive introduction to coding.

This week, a group of students from Taylor's University in Malaysia came to the Studio for a couple of workshops, hosted by Studio Producer Verity, Projects Co-ordinator Jess and DCRC Research Associate Jess Linington. Verity and Jess gave a Playable City workshop, where the students had to come up with a Playable City project. They had an unlimited budget, and had to pitch their ideas at the end of the workshop. The two marvellous ideas they pitched to us were; a giant interactive bubble wrap intervention to entertain commuters, and an unexpected experience for dog-walkers, where their dogs are suddenly spotlighted, and a lone instrument plays, reacting to their movements (the more dogs, the more instruments; a potential orchestra/cacophony). Have a look at Verity’s blog about the workshop On the second day, Jess Linington held a digital storytelling workshop with them, where they told their own news stories using interactive storytelling tool, Zeega.

DIY Citizenship, the DCRC’s one-day symposium on Making, Activism and Design is coming up next week. Find out more and book your place here. The DCRC have also recently announced September’s Creative Citizens Conference, which will spotlight the motivations, achievements and the potential of creative citizens. Have a look.

Yesterday, Verity went to the Southbank Centre to attend part of the Alchemy Festival, which is celebrating a fusion of UK and Asian culture. The Festival hosted an UnBox panel, discussing Future Cities, based on the recent lab in Ahmedabad which was supported by the REACT team.. As part of the festival, there is currently an exhibition showcasing all five of this year’s UnBox fellowship projects, so pop in if you’re nearby.

Two familiar Toms have been in San Fransisco this week for the Tech Conference, Solid. REACT Objects Sandbox Producer, Tom Metcalfe was at the conference talking about UX in IoT and collaboration, and Tom Armitage was also there giving a talk called ‘A Lamp Post is a Thing Too’ about Hello Lamp Post, his project that we commissioned for last year’s Playable City Award. Our former Creative Technologist, Dan Williams also gave a great talk on New Materials, New Narratives. We’re looking forward to hearing about their Californian adventures when they get back to the UK.

On Tuesday, Calvium took part in the Mayfest Nightwalk, which was built using their app development software, AppFurnace. Charlie, Calvium’s Marketing assistant has just posted a blog about it.

This week, we welcome nu desine’s new Sales and Marketing Officer, Diego Alcala-Gaona into the fold. Diego is a very smiley AlphaSphere enthusiast with a background in TV production, and we’re looking forward to having him around.