Last week, David hacked an incredible choir in the bar, Matthew and Jonathan started testing prototypes for Shadowing and both Calvium and Victoria Forrest released apps, which share (or encourage people to share) stories of the past.

Choral music drifted through Watershed this week as our creative technologist David and freelance creative coder Stefan Goodchild hacked the Erebus Youth Ensemble among diners and coffee drinkers in the café/bar. Hack the Choir was part of this year’s Bristol Proms, and placed the live performance of choral music into the hands of curious technologists. David and Stefan carried out a number of experiments involving different sensors. At one point, they attached pulse sensors to the choir as they sang. The audience were awe-struck as their pulses synchronised. They also mic’d up the singers, who each had their own stage light, and the volume and pitch of their voices controlled the brightness and colour of their own light. During the bass singer’s solo, the choir were lit in a deep green, when the sopranos sang high they were lit with intense red/pink. All of the experiments were repeated for a public showcase on Thursday at 5pm. Check out the Hack the Choir blog to watch the videos and find out about the other experiments.

Jonathan and Matthew have been performing serious surgery on streetlamps in the Studio over the last few weeks, while developing their Playable City project, Shadowing. They set up their first test runs in the Studio kitchen last week. As we walked through to make ourselves a cup of tea, we saw our shadows take on a life of their own. Needless to say we were soon flapping our arms about and dosey-doe-ing as we waited for the kettle to boil. This week the team are installing Shadowing prototypes outside of Watershed. We’ll keep you posted on what happens.

Calvium have just released an AppTrail which recounts the story of the New Jersey boardwalk’s encounter with Hurricane Sandy and last year’s devastating fire. Boardwalk Stories from Sandy was created by local radio producers, who wanted to record the stories of people who were there when the tragic events took place, and to promote a discussion about how the area should be rebuilt, if at all. If you can’t make it to the boardwalk, you can still listen at home. Download the app for IOS or Android.

Studio resident Victoria Forrest has also just released an app. She designed and published the app for For The Fallen, a film challenge encouraging people to make their own films commemorating World War One. The For the Fallen app was released yesterday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Britains entry into the war. Download the app here.

Nu desine were at Secret Garden Party the weekend before last, as the AlphaSphere was being used to play sound effects to enhance games like pass the pigs and zorb football in the festival’s games arena. We are sad but excited for nu desine, who will be moving all of their R&D and manufacturing operations to Hong Kong Science and Technology Park in September. The move will position nu desine nearby to their manufacturing partners situated in South China, and also facilitate a series of connections with the financial markets in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. This isn’t an end of nu desine’s presence in the Studio though, their marketing team will stay here, and the Studio will become the centre of global marketing for for nu desine, the AlphaSphere and future products.

Studio residents Albow have been developing a radical new events sharing platform called This Is On. They hosted a discussion last Thursday alongside the DCRC to share what they have learnt during the process, and to talk about the next steps they’ll take. This Is On has an interesting new kind of value exchange system, which is well worth a read about.