Is there anything that Studio resident Laura Kriefman can’t do? Possibly not. With her own idiosyncratic style, the Guerrilla Dance Project’s founder is no stranger to unconventional methods of dance. Last week Laura was awarded a Creative Fellowship from The Space/WIRED joint initiative, and has received a £30,000 bursary to develop her project, Crane Dance – choreographing a city skyline. You can read more about this amazing project here.

However, choreography seems to be just one of many hats adorning Laura’s head. She has been lead artist on the ‘Reframing Sheldon’ programme – an initiative to utilise digital technology to enhance the engagement at Warwickshire Museum. The brief was to reimagine the frame of The Sheldon Tapestry, one of Warwickshire’s most historically significant artefacts. Quickly acquainting herself with digital embroidery, she created this beautiful masterpiece inspired by the digital age, representing industrialised travel, DNA code, fractal patterns and space exploration amongst other aspects in this incredible new tapestry. It has a temporary home in the Studio before it makes it’s way up to Warwickshire for the exhibition. 

James Wheale of Understory has ventured out of the kitchen and into Colston Hall, Bristol’s largest concert venue. Accompanied by a drone, and fellow Studio Resident Matthew Bjerregaard of Visual Persistence, this experiment involved James playing the organ whilst enjoying the world’s rarest chocolate – all the while reporting his neural activity with the use of his EEG brain scanner. It was part of an on-going set of tests conducted by James, evaluating how different music and musical environments change the flavour perception of chocolate. The full video of the experiment, along with James' collaboration with DJ Yoda and a new artwork, will be released in the coming weeks. To be continued…

It would appear that drones are all the rage this week. We have welcomed back Ashley (and his new toy – a smartphone-controlled flying camera drone) as he returns to Bristol for the second half of his artists residency with us. We are also happy to announce that long-time collaborator Pete Bennett is now a fully-fledged member of the community, spending the next two months here working on his research project Resonate Bits.

We are also excited to introduce Tanya and Stephen, who have begun an internship to assist with production and management of the Playable City Award winners project, Urbanimals, by LAX. Tanya, who has joined us as our Playable City Communications intern, is between her 2nd and 3rd year of a Filmmaking and Creative Media degree at UWE – she hopes the role will compliment her practical filmmaking skills. Stephen had graduated from MA in Classics at University of Bristol prior to 8 months traveling in New Zealand, and he has taken on the Production internship upon returning. He has a background in improvised comedy and theatre, which has cemented an interest in Fringe-style immersive and playful performance. We look forward to working with both of them as they get ready to launch Urbanimals in September.

Last week, Creative Technologist David mentored several teams of young coding experts as part of Young Rewired State Festival of Code, led in Bristol by Knowle West Media Centre. David and the teams went to the grand final in Birmingham at the weekend and brought home the prestigious ’Best Code’ award for their festival-themed app ‘Festable’. Congratulations!