We have a number of exciting opportunities currently open to applications. From this year’s Playable City Award to our Artist Residency and New and Emerging Talent Residencies there are plenty of ways to become part of the Studio community and to get the support/funding/space to develop your ideas to their full potential this summer. 

Last year’s Playable City Award winning project, Shadowing has been nominated for a Designs of the Year Award and will be exhibited, alongside the other 75 nominees in London’s Design Museum from 25 March to 23 August. Our Creative Technologist, David has been tweaking and polishing up one of the Shadowing lamp post heads to be taken over to London next Wednesday.

At ‘the end of the beginning’ of REACT’s Play Sandbox scheme, Producer Jo Lansdowne has written a brilliant blog reflecting on the whole fun, thought-provoking and valuably chaotic process. The Sandbox has come to a close, but the 6 teams; Trove, Connected Play, Fabulous Beasts, Mighty Minis, Millie Moreorless and Luminous Laboratory will continue to develop their projects. Keep an eye on the Play microsite for more blogs reflecting on the Sandbox process and how far each of the projects have come.

Anagram are packing their bags and heading to the US to take part in SXSW in Austin, Texas and Tribeca Film Festival in New York. They will be part of an interactive SXSW session exploring ‘How to Play with VR, Physical Spaces and Ink’, and will then head over to New York’s Spring Studios to install their immersive documentary, Door Into the Dark. The work has been commissioned as one of five Storyscapes interactive installations to be presented at the festival, each chosen for their groundbreaking approach to storytelling and technology. Friends of the Studio, Blast Theory have also been selected to be part of the Storyscapes line up, presenting their eerie life-coach app, Karen.

Paul and Mark from Daredevil Project will also be at SXSW 2015 to introduce Duel to the people of Austin. If you’re out there, tweet @Duel_app to say hi.

There have been some exciting developments in Di Mainstone’s Human Harp project. Di has been working with Seb (x-io technologies), developing the latest iteration of their Digi-bow, which will allow the players of the bridge, or ‘movicians’ to manipulate the sound of the resonating bridge cables. The Digi-bow is a retractable dog lead containing a variety of sensors, which will allow the reverb, pitch and volume of the cable’s sound to be controlled by the length, angle and speed at which the chord is pulled. Listen to this Human Harp interview on BCFM radio to find out more about the project.

We are delighted to welcome some new faces to the Studio this week; Kristen Pye has just started a part time coordinator role with REACT. She is also working with UWE on a Creative Industries mapping project. Cherry Collard has joined nu desine as digital marketing coordinator for the launch of the IndieGogo Campaign for their new entry level instrument, the AlphaSphere me.

We have also been visited by lots of interesting people this week; from tech journalists and Council members for the launch of Bristol Is Open, to Icon Films and researchers from La Femis (the French equivalent of NFTS), who are visiting hundreds of cinemas across Europe, exploring ways in which cinemas are adapting to the digital age.