With Christmas just around the corner the Studio has definitely got that festive vibe! It’s been a week full of exciting events, game launches and residency announcements. Read on to find out more:

Excitingly this week brought the deadline for the Playable City Award so a lot of the Studio team have been busy short listing. The 30k award was to produce a work which surprises, challenges and engages people in exploring the playable city. On Friday the 14 of December we will be posting this shortlist on the Playable City website and inviting comments on the chosen projects before judging in January, so look out for it here.

The Studio and IOP Publishing are delighted to announce that designer Helen White will be the recipient of the Communicating Science graduate and new talent residency. Following a career in the music industry, Helen recently graduated from UWE with a first class degree in Design: Materials/Process/Context. During this residency, she will be developing a  ‘solar wind chime’; an installation that is powered by real-time data triggering an audible and visual record of the movement of charged particles released from the sun. Join us for our first event on 25 January, a free Lunchtime Talk (1-2pm) at the Studio, in which Helen will introduce her work and her plans for the residency.

Verity has been busy helping to plan the Studio’s involvement in Digital Bristol Week. It’s week of free events, networking and knowledge exchange for the creative industries. It is a BBC Bristol Partnership event and will include talks, workshops and showcases of some of the most exciting digital and creative work going on in the city. The Studio is getting involved in various ways. On Thu 31 Jan we, alongside other creative companies and venues in the city, will be throwing open the doors for an open day. The residents will demo some of the exciting projects they are working on and we will offer free hourly tours for anyone interested in finding out more about what we do. Clare Reddington will give a talk at the BBC about creative technology and the potential for developing new broadcast models, and the REACT team will be giving an introduction to the upcoming Future Documentaries theme.

The DCRC will be bringing a flavour of last year’s iDocs festival to Digital Bristol Week, exploring the emerging field of Interactive Documentary. There will be a very special event featuring Max Whitby from Touch Press and Tom Morris, Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic in conversation about telling the story of War Horse, through iPad app and stage versions respectively. Full details are available on the BBC website here.

Rik Lander and Vanessa Bellaar Spruijt have just finished devising and shooting the various media materials that are going to be part of Rik’s new show The Memory Dealer. The Memory Dealer is a play that takes place in several places across the city, it is a form of interactive theatre that makes you become part of the story. To play you need to have an iPhone but you will be able to borrow one from them if you don’t have one. They will be holding user testing during Bristol Digital Week. Details on how to book will be going live soon but check out their website here to find out more.  

Vanessa has also just joined the Bristol Temple Quarter Animating the Zone project with Watershed, Knowle West Media Centre, MAYK and Bristol City Council. She will be co-ordinating the programme of events between now and April. You can find out more here.

On Wednesday Ben from Opposable Games headed over to @Bristol to showcase their new connected game Clockwork Racers at a children’s Raspberry Pi event with over 400 kids! Ben said the evening went really well and they had constant queues of people wanting to try out the game. Very excitingly you can now download and play Clockwork Racers for free on your iOS device here, check out our news story here to find out more!

On Thursday James Parker from Opposable Games and Will Luton were on a panel at Mobile Gaming Europe, a gaming conference built to address critical mobile challenges. The panel was discussing best practice, engagement optimization and how to retain quality, loyal players. You can find out more about the event and panels here. Will was also interviewed for the website ufert.se around the misconceptions of Free-to-Play games. You can read the interview: FarmVille, CloneVille, and misconceptions about Free-to-Play here.

At the weekend the nu desine team had a reshuffle of furniture in preparation for all the AlphaSphere parts arriving in the Studio. They have now sold out of the AlphaSphere Elite series and are waiting to commence production. Check out their blog here for all the latest news.

Lastly don’t forget to join us on Friday 14 Dec for our last Lunchtime Talk before the Christmas break where Studio resident, and artist Kathy Hinde will be talking about her latest project Vocal Migrations. Kathy has been researching and developing a new vocal work that combines live singing with electronically altered voices. The piece is inspired by how bats Echo-locate by using sound to ‘see’ their surroundings and the project aims to employ bio-mimicry as a creative method. You can find out more here.