Week commencing 7 May

Huzzah! A ray of sunshine is breaking through the rafters of the Pervasive Media Studio, being so unfamiliar with this sensation we don’t know what to do about it! Tangible FX’s Lee is positively glowing and has been totally activated by this strange phenomenon. Lots going on this week:

Watch this space for Victoria and Tim, they are working together on a very exciting project in Brazil which we will fully grill them about upon their return.

 Vanessa Bellaar Spruijt  and Mark Leaver are travelling to Guimarães in a couple of weeks to mark the launch of the first Open Cities interventions. James Bridle will be facilitating a series of workshops and Charles Leadbeater will be guiding them through Open City methodology via their digital platform. There have been exciting discussions with Geoffrey Taylor and Sam Kinsley about creating a design fiction using the concept of the Internet of Things to create a peek into the future of Guimarães.

Vanessa is also still working on the ArtSpaceLifeSpace College Project to help with exposure of all the projects that go on there. Keep an eye on Battle for the Winds and specifically wind gathering vessel 'Vera' which has been created at The College Project by talented inventor Will Datson 'Vera' will feature in Bristol's Torch relay show in Bristol (Tue 22 May).

Indie Rock/Pop band Zulu Winter came and visited the PMStudio with [PIAS] Media on Tuesday prior to their Bristol show at the Louisiana. After soundcheck they came and spent an hour with Adam and the amazing Alphasphere. It was great to see such a passionate reaction from all of the band, each of them discussing the possibilities of the instrument around their particular area. The band also spent time looking at the work by Tangible FX and the McGuires – hopefully they will come back and visit us when they open for Keane at the sold out show at The O2 Academy Bristol in June.

Elsewhere in the Studio community, nu desine continue their roll, the Glade Festival , have just confirmed their wish for an AlphaSphere Live performance to open one of their major stages on the Saturday of the festival. Adam and Liam are pulling together an exclusive set featuring themselves and some of their favourite alpha testers who are in-and-out of the studio working on material. The demo for Zulu Winter , set-up by Seth of [PIAS] went well beyond all expectations, and is likely to see some very exciting outcomes in the very near future. AlphaSphere pre-orders are racking up, contracts are being finalised and production is about to be initiated.

Calvium’s latest success story is the development of a relaxation jukebox app, with technology developing so quickly, music composer James realised that the humble CD’s will soon be a thing of the past, designing an app felt like a daunting process but Calvium’s Jo talked him through the process step by step, producing the marvellous relaxation jukebox.

REACT’s regional research has sent Matt and Jo to Univeristy of Exeter and Univerity of Cardiff to build connections between researchers in arts and humanities and to discover creative companies, in light of the new theme of books and print. Jo met Neil Cocker the founder of Tedx Cardiff to chat about the marginalia of monks, Jo is very excited about this idea.