Week commencing 2 January:

After a very festive Christmas and New Year holiday everyone in the Studio is reenergised and excited to see what the New Year brings! Read on to find out what’s been happening in the Studio this week:

Over the holidays Kaspar from nu desine was in Berlin speaking at an Open Source event EHSM. He  spoke about the common sense approach to open innovation adopted for the AlphaSphere’s development. You can find out more about EHSM here. Very excitingly nu desine are also gearing up to head over to California later this month for The NAMM show 2013. You can stay up to date with nu desine on their twitter account here.

Verity is preparing to collate the comments made by the public on the Playable City Award shortlist to send to the judging panel next week. The 30k award will enable one of the ten shortlisted artists to produce a work which surprises, challenges and engages people in exploring the playable city. The shortlist represents a mix of ideas, art forms, countries and technologies and presents a brilliant range of playful and playable interventions into the city. Incorporating everything from music to games to 3D printing, the shortlisted ideas utilise giant building blocks, interactive screens, running robots, singing buildings, body scanners and talking lampposts. We are inviting you to read through the summaries of all ten and leave your suggestions, support and questions in the comments boxes before 9 January when the collated comments will be sent to the judging panel. Which projects would you be excited to play with? Which would work best in the city? What haven't they thought of? Have a read of all the projects and leave some feedback here.

Meanwhile Tarim and Tim have been working on some of the technical elements for The Stick House project. The Stick House is a theatre piece inspired by the magical writing of Angela Carter. It fuses live performance, music and pervasive media into a darkly haunting, yet beautiful experience. Working in collaboration, writer Sharon Clark and creative technologist Tom Burton will not only set out to create an exciting piece of performance, but will research how psychological effectors, such as low-level noise, lighting, touch and feel, in combination with pervasive technologies, can create more immersive experiences. They will be running some work in progress events over the coming months so stay tuned to find out more.
 
Tim has been preparing to run Culture Shift for the British Council in Nairobi in mid February, on the theme of the Digital Moving Image. You can find out more about culture shift on the British Council’s website here.

This week it has been announced that tickets for Digital Bristol week will be released on 14 January. It’s week of free events, networking and knowledge exchange for the creative industries. 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 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. You can find out more about the week here.

James Bridle who worked with Watershed in Guimarães on the Open Cities project will be giving a talk at Spike Island next Tuesday. James is a London-based writer, artist, publisher and technologist whose work covers the intersection of literature, culture and the network. In 2011, he coined the term ‘New Aesthetic’ to describe the increasing appearance of the visual language of digital technology and the Internet in the physical world. At Spike Island he will talk about how perception has shifted in an age of rapid technological development and the potential implications of this “eruption of the digital” on contemporary visual practice. You can find out more information and buy tickets here.

Lastly don’t forget to join us on Friday 11 January for our Lunchtime Talk about what the “Internet of Things” could mean to makers. Craft has always played an important role in society and culture worldwide, taking forms that can be challenging, beautiful, useful, tactile and extraordinary. But what could happen if there were more opportunities for contemporary makers to work with technologists? In late 2012, Watershed launched a new programme of Craft + Technology Residencies, to give three makers the chance to find out. This talk brings together the recipients of the commissions who will share the ideas they plan to develop, joining the conversation will be researchers Simon Lock from i-DAT and Katie Bunnell from Autonomatic; the Crafts Council. It’s one not to miss. You can find out more about the talk here and our upcoming programme of talks for January on our events page here.