Alongside the furore of The Rooms festival, which has been a big part of Studio life these past few weeks (blog post here), the Studio residents have been ploughing full steam ahead with their individual work, and we have plenty of emerging news to share with you.

2015 has been the International Year of Light, which has been a fitting time to resurrect the Playable City 2014 winner Shadowing by Jonathon Chomko and Matthew Rosier, was reimagined for the streets of York for their 10th annual Illuminating York festival celebration. Between Wednesday 28 and Saturday 31 October, the lamps were installed across seven locations, as headlining artwork. They will remain installed as part of the every day life of the city up until 31 Dec.

As far as this year's award goes, the Playable City team have just wrapped up Urbanimals, created by architectural think-tank LAX. The season of interactive animals encouraged thousands to play throughout various locations in Bristol.

Much fun was had at the Playable City Day involving talks and workshops that happened on 19 Nov as part of the Festival of the Future City. The team led a game of Sneaks & Blaggers that inspired creativity and play amongst the many who attended.  

Now, Watershed Creative Director Clare Reddington is planning her trip to Mexico to join a Playable City panel of speakers at the Exploraciones para una Megalópolis: Ciudad Lúdica next week.

Speaking of which, Circumstance have recently returned from Mexico themselves. On 13 - 14 Nov, they presented a subtlemob ‘Como si fuera la última vez’, (translated: As If It Were The Last Time) to a Spanish-speaking audience for the first time. As the name suggests, the subtlemob involved an emotional and intimate experience, using MP3 files carrying instructions to perform simple actions, or detailing those simple actions of those around you.

Residents Anagram recently came to the end of the first run of Nightwatchers - their immersive night-time experience set at the Tower of London. The sold out shows wowed audiences and Anagram have agreed to extend the run to meet the demand in interest in February. Watch this space for information about second release tickets.

Four of our Studio residents have been selected to present a panel at SXSW 2016 about Subtle Interfaces: Designing for Calm Tech. Verity McIntosh, Tom Metcalfe, Peter Bennett and Chloe Meineck will be heading to Texas next March. 

Molly Price has just returned from Shenzhen, where she was part of the British Council and AHRC 'Living Research: Making in China' programme. You can watch a short video about this below. Molly joins us to talk about her experiences in China at our Lunchtime talk on Fri 11 Dec.

#LivingTheResearch: Making in China pt. 2 from Oscar Taylor on Vimeo.

Resident Joe Ryan of VRGO has launched his Kickstarter campaign in an aim to crowdfund £20k towards the development of his hands-free controller chair for use in virtual reality applications. At time of print, he'd hit £19,587 with 8 days left to go.  

Resident James Wheale has released an intriguing trailer for something that's been a year in the making: The Great Chocolate War dining experience. Supported by Arts Council England, James combines storytelling, visuals, audio, interaction and his signature culinary style to create a dining console from which you both follow the narrative, and eat from. You can view the trailer below.

Heading in a slightly new direction, the Daredevil Project team behind Duel have turned the commercial app into a photo tournament product for brand engagement. They are running free play tests for anyone with an audience. For more information, contact mark@daredevilproject.com.