It’s been a spellbinding week in the Studio as we played host to the world’s first Magic Hack, one of our New Talent and Graduate residents started and lots of our lovely Studio residents headed to Venturefest. Read on to find out more:

On Monday we were joined by Josh Barnes, a recent graduate in 3-D Design from the University Of Brighton, and one of our new graduate residents. Josh's work explores the relationship between physical objects and Augmented Reality experiences, and his project ‘Communication Quilt' was originally designed to combat symptoms of loneliness experienced by children spending long stays in hospital. The Communication Quilt uses Augmented Reality [AR] technology to enable intimate communication with familiar textiles. During his residency Josh will be looking to deepen his investigation into the nature of how children and adults interact with AR technology through user-testing different scenarios and user-experiences. He will also be looking to address ethical issues involved in a project of this nature by designing systems that bring families closer together through an object, in ways such as group customisation and the shared viewing of messages communally. If you’d like to find our more about Josh’s work, he is giving a lunchtime talk: Mixing Medium Meaning here on Friday 22 November. You can also find out about our other new residents Silas Adekunle and ANAGRAM in a brilliant blog post by our Studio Producer Verity here.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we hosted the world's first Magic Hack in the Studio! Organised by Kieron Kirkland as part of the Magician in Residence programme, the Magic Hack brought together a fantastic group of over twenty brilliant magicians and technologists to explore what can happen when magic and tech collide. You can find out more about all the brilliant people that took part here. It was a fantastic couple of days that finished with a mini showcase of delights, where we were confronted with voodoo, anti-matter, a mind-reading gong and much more. Jess, our projects co-ordinator has posted a write-up of the event, and you can check out the storify page here. Our magicians in residence are doing a showcase of everything they have developed over the course of the last few months on 4 December at 6pm. We really hope to see you there.

On Thursday Verity, Michael Johnson, Nan Guo, Charlotte Quickenden, Silas Adekunle and Adam Place all headed to Venturefest Bristol for a day of showcases and discussion. Venturefest is free event organised by Science City Bristol that brings together over 1,000 people. Attendants include students wishing to learn about all aspects of business, seasoned investors looking for their next big thing, entrepreneurs seeking funding, designers seeking new customers and people who are seeking solutions to particular business problems. Verity was on a panel about using shared work environments to accelerate growth, along with former Studio resident Ben Trewhella who helped to co-found the very brilliant Bristol Games Hub. Michael and Nan were invited to showcase their Space Craft Preparation area, used to prototype the manufacture of actual spacecrafts that will be used in their project Pocket Spacecraft. Adam gave a performance with his brilliant electronic musical instrument the AlphaSphere. Silas spoke about his start-up company Reach Robotics, which plans to change the face of entertainment robotics, and Charlotte spoke about her physic-digi bookmarks and the future of bookshops.

Studio resident Paul Archer has been super busy organising a brilliant Daredevil Tournament in Bristol as part of Movember on 22 November. Daredevil tournaments are a new and exciting way to explore the city and make mischief as you’re tasked with acting out one word challenges in the most create and exciting way.  The tournament starts from Watershed and culminates in a party at the Crofters Rights where the winning team will be announced. Have a look at Paul’s new video promoting the event, and visit the Daredevil website to find out more and buy a ticket.

We’re very excited to have Duncan Speakman back in the Studio over the next three months while he works on a number of brilliant projects. The collective he founded; circumstance, have just shown their mobile symphony ‘A Folded Path’ in Norway as part of the festival Screen City, and it’s next outing will be Audacious - A Festival of Sonic Art in New Zealand in February – we’ll bring you more details soon. You can now also purchase the beautiful soundtracks from circumstance's Subtlemobs ‘As If It Were the Last Time' and 'Our Broken Voice'. on their website here.

If you missed last week’s lunchtime talk, where games developer Gaz Bushell and biochemist Jody Mason came in to the Studio to speak about their collaboration on a game centred around the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, you can read all about it in our talk write-up. This week though, Hannah Nicklin and Seth Honnor came to the Studio to give a talk. If you’re a regular to the Studio you might remember that a year ago they gave a talk about a new idea they had for payments for live events that happen in a non-box office, online and mobile setting which they were calling Digital Hat. Today they gave another Lunchtime Talk where they explained their research and development process, gave live demos of an early prototype, and gave us a report on research questions being answered alongside the DCRC at UWE. They revealed the new name for their project: This Is On. The talk write-up for this will be available to look at on our website on Wednesday next week.

Finally don’t forget that REACT announced the fantastic UnBox LABS 2014 last week. The UnBox LABS will be a unique experience celebrating the collaborative power of design, research and digital technologies. The lab will bring together inspirational academic and industry researchers from UK and India to explore Future Cities. The project is a collaboration between UnBox, British Council, the AHRC, and the Science & Innovation Network, supported by the REACT and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. UnBox are seeking eight creative practitioners and eight academic researchers from the UK to collaborate with 20 creative practitioners and researchers from India. You can find details of how to apply here.