The Studio is rife with activity and anticipation this week, as we prepare for the Studio’s 6th Birthday Party, announce the call out for the second ever Playable City Award, and learn that a few residents and former residents have been nominated for Best Digital Innovation and Best Companion Content in this year’s RTS West of England Awards.

We are delighted to invite to applications for the Playable City Award 2014. Artists, designers, architects, technologists and creative practitioners from around the world are invited to propose new ideas that will challenge the screen-based clichés of a smart city, and respond instead to cities as playable, open, and configurable spaces. The £30,000 award sits at the intersection of art, technology and culture, and we encourage applicants to submit ideas that will use technology in an integrated and interesting way, injecting a sense of intrigue and meaning to public spaces. The winning idea will be publicly installed in Bristol in the UK later this year, with the potential to be toured to other cities around the world. The deadline for applications is 11 April, and the shortlist will be announced on 28 April. Last year the inaugural award was won by Pan Studio, Tom Armitage and Gyorgyi Galik for their project Hello Lamp Post, which enabled thousands of people in Bristol to strike up conversations with physical objects around the city using simple text messages. The project received global attention and over 25,000 text messages were exchanged during the project’s run from July to September 2013. The winners have gone on to be nominated in the Design Museum’s prestigious Designs of the Year 2014 competition.

We are excited to see that this year’s RTS West of England Awards have nominated residents Tim Kindberg’s Nth Screen, and Rik Lander’s the Memory Dealer for Best Digital Innovation. Both projects have been developed here in the Studio. Also, our former residents Mobile Pie and Opposable Games have been nominated for Best Companion Content. The Awards will take place on 9 March.

Tim Kindberg is going to develop Nth Camera alongside Nth Screen, which will enable you to synchronise filming on multiple devices. This is being funded by a REACT prototype fund, and will be in development February through July, with Tim, Charlotte and Mandy. Find out more about Nth Screen here, and find out about Nth Camera job opportunities here.

Last weekend, Tarim and Tine created an interactive light and smoke installation, spanning a 70m footbridge in Reykjavik for their Winter Lights Festival. The lights were proximity triggered to change colour as people walked the length of the bridge and the smoke amplified the light and colour to create the stunning spectacle you see in the picture above. Tarim and Tine plan to tour this installation, so fingers crossed we’ll be seeing this appear over Bristol’s harbour one day.