This week Kaspar has been working on an exciting new musical hardware project: The Nomech Mini - A 4x4 capacitive touch button grid, basically a hardware version of this fun Muzy Grid app where you can make your own music! Check out his progress here.

The Play Sandbox projects have begun their research and development with the aim to produce new prototype products for children between now and next Spring. The teams will be working with children to create, build and test prototypes and help us make more meaningful products. We will be working with a team of researchers to explore how this works in practice and to inform the Sandbox design as we go.

Did you know REACT have helped more than fifty projects move from drawing board to prototype. But what happens next? How many have gone on to a successful launch and how does this compare with the experience of other start up agencies? Check out REACT Producer Gabriel Gilson new blog post Backing Risk where he explores the landscape.

Last week Splash & Ripple launched A Knight's Peril, an interactive audio experience at Bodiam Castle, East Sussex. One year in the making, the experience builds on Ghost in the Garden, their REACT project, to create an adventure that turns traditional heritage interpretation on its head. If you find yourself in East Sussex, go play!

Quipu Project is a living, interactive documentary, combining old and new technology to connect the voices of people affected by forced sterilisations in Peru with listeners around the world. REACT funded the first stage of their amazing project as part of Future Documentary Sandbox, and now they’ve launched a crowd funder Indiegogo campaign to bring the next part of their project to the world. Show them your support!

Studio Lunch: We had a lot of fun with the PM Studio Conker competition and even more fun play testing former resident Josh Barnes’s Patch Pals app that he has been developing with Play Nicely. The Patch Pals app is a beautiful, tactile communications system using a clever augmented reality platform and visual markers found in illustrations and patterns on objects and textiles such as books or a patch work quilt, that allows children to send and receive messages with loved ones.

Tarim has set up a Ubisense (allows computers to know exactly where things are using sensors) for Ad Spiers’s NESTA project, Flatland, a theatrical installation where people navigate a space in the dark using an haptic device.

As part of the BFI SciFi: Days of Fear and Wonder season, Circumstance, an international artists collective, have teamed up with the Watershed and Arnolfini to create a visceral sci-fi opera that explores the real and fictional possibilities of terraforming! They invite you to come and experience ‘When There Is Only Us’ this Saturday 13th December at the Arnolfini, 8pm, £8/6.