It’s been a jam packed week full of exciting events, workshops and showcases here in the Studio. We hosted a fantastic special midweek talk and saw the culmination of three months rapid R&D work on the future of books and print in the REACT showcase. Read on to find out more...

On Tuesday we were joined in the Studio by game and experience designer Ken Eklund, who gave a fantastic Lunchtime Talk to a packed out audience. Ken has long been interested in the positive social effects of collaborative experiences and open-ended, creative play. In work such as WORLD WITHOUT OIL, GISKIN ANOMALY and ED ZED OMEGA he explores how contributing to "authentic fictions" ( real-seeming yet fictional stories) engage people directly in real-world issues and have fun collaborating on storymaking, positive solutions and action. It was great to have him in the Studio and to take him for a visit to the Bristol Games Hub.  

On Wednesday we celebrated the end of the R&D phase of the eight REACT Books & Print Sandbox commissions. From Jekyll 2.0, an immersive gothic experience that morphs with every breath you take, to Book Kernel a bespoke publishing platform for live events that ships and delivers in a day, the projects demonstrated the exciting, emergent possibilities of a fast-changing industry. The event was filmed for DShed our online platform so look out for the eight  individual project films and Q&A session that will be uploaded soon. You can find out more about all the projects on the REACT website.

Studio residents Tim Kindberg, Charlotte Crofts and Hazel Grian have been running the first of their REACT workshops on the ‘Nth screen’ exploring multi smart phone content. By turning a group of mobile phones and tablet computers into a set of co-ordinated screens for watching multi-segment films, they are exploring how film viewing becomes social and communal, building upon the desire to be together, whether in public, at the dining table or in front of the TV. You can follow their progress in our weekly blogs and find out more on the REACT website.

This week we’ve also been busy organising some fantastic Lunchtime Talks coming up. One to flag is our talk with the awesome Mitch Altman on 10 May. Mitch is the founder of the Noisebridge Hackerspace in San Francisco and is a major figure in the global Maker movement. He’s also the inventor of such excellent gadgets as the TV-B-Gone and Trip Glasses. He’ll discuss: As technology progresses at ever increasing speeds, we are poised to see our lives change forever.  Will this change be good?  Can we have influence over it?  Will hackerspaces be an ameliorating and positive influence? After the talk we will be joined by Bristol games developer WormSlayer who will be demo-ing an Oculus Rift, a prototype Virtual Reality headset that has been taking the tech world by storm. This will be the first opportunity anyone in the region has had to see for themselves what all the fuss is about. Demos will be available subject to capacity.

As if that’s not awesome enough Bristol Hackspace are running a public workshop with Mitch. He and Jimmie Rodgers (inventor of the Lots-of-LEDs Arduino shield among other kits) are in the UK for the Maker Faire in Newcastle on 27 and 28 April, after which they’re touring a few Hackspaces. Mitch and Jimmie will be running a public workshop at Bristol Hackspace on Saturday 11 May at 12pm. You can book your tickets on eventbrite here if you’re interested in taking part.

You should also mark the 18/19 of May in your diary to take part in some user testing for a very exciting project, BikeTAG that’s coming to Bristol’s Enterprise Zone. Part exploration, part battle, part collaboration, Colour Keepers is a chance to play on bikes in the city, set colours free and co-create light trails using the BikeTAG light system. With five teams and five colours to play for, players will explore the Zone as they battle to win. BikeTAG was originally created during the 2012 Playable City Sprint, hosted by Watershed and the British Council by artists Bang & Lee, Tine Bech and Julian Sykes. Tickets are free but need to be reserved in advance, find out more on the Watershed website here.

This week we’ve also been busy planning our Mayfest schedule. Mayfest is Bristol’s unique annual festival of contemporary theatre running 16-26 May. With so many awesome shows to see we’re spoilt for choice, but we will definitely fit in a trip to the four wonderful shows below that our residents are involved in:

The Memory Dealer - Rik Lander. Somewhere between theatre, game and out-of-body-experience, The Memory Dealer is set in a world where mobile phones can record and replay memories. The audience enter that world and become part of a story which is revealed by headphone audio, media installations and encounters with live performers.
 
Turning the Page - Stand + Stare Imagine if your well-thumbed, outdated guidebook could talk. Through this intimate installation you are invited to investigate a series of clues hidden within a guidebook that magically come to life as you turn the pages.

Temple Songs - Bristol Temple Quarter Commission. The Beautiful Song - The Beautiful Machine is an a-cappella chorus led by composer and director, Jennifer Bell. To mark the end of a series of flash close-harmony concerts in Bristol Enterprise zone during Mayfest, they are inviting all comers to an intimate, one-off performance in an empty office.

Mask Boy - James Wheale uses poetry to retell his harrowing time in Sierra Leone where he faced suicide and malaria, experimented in time travel with a witchdoctor and created a superhero alter-ego to rescue himself from madness. You can find the full programme of events, and book tickets for all the shows on the Mayfest website here.  

Lastly join us today at 1pm for a fantastic Lunchtime Talk from Studio resident Ruth Farrar. Ruth will be talking about her project From Bristol to Brooklyn: In Search of Soundmarks' (an audio equivalent of landmarks). In New York, she recently launched two sound art interactive websites where listeners can create and send audio postcards and now is bringing them back to Bristol. Come along to find out more about an alternative, audio method of sharing impressions of places.