Last week was a brilliantly busy week in the Studio as we prepared for the launch of our first Playable City Award project Hello Lamp Post and launched a call for four Bristol artists to take place in a fantastic cultural exchange with Brazil. Read on to find out about these Studio opportunities and more:

Last Monday we were joined in the Studio by PAN Studio,Tom Armitage and Gyorgyi Galik to put the final touches to their project Hello Lamp Post winner of the first Playable City Award. Hello Lamp Post is an experimental, city-wide platform for play. It is an opportunity to rediscover your local environment, share your memories of the city and uncover the stories that other people leave behind. By texting in a simple code found on most of Bristol’s street furniture you can have a conversation with the everyday objects you walk by. The project is now live, you can find out how to play and view some of the conversations talking place in the city right now on the website here.

Watershed is delighted to announce a call for ‘Recife: The Playable City’, an exciting new international initiative to bring artists, creative producers and technologists together from Brazil’s Pernambuco region and the UK. In collaboration with the British Council and Porto Digital in Brazil, we are seeking four UK-based artists, four Brazilian-based artists and four Brazilian-based producers, to collaborate and  develop experimental work exploring the theme of the Playable City. During the three-week programme, practitioners will work together in small teams, to develop playful interventions that rethink public space. Participants will spend two weeks developing ideas in the Studio, and one week developing work at Porto Digital in Recife. Through a shared process of making and testing, practitioners will explore ideas and develop works that responds to the challenges our future cities may face. Selected participants will receive a bursary, travel and accommodation, as well as a programme of activities delivered by Watershed, Porto Digital and the British Council. Our call for UK artists is live, so find out more and apply here.

The awesome kickstarter project Pocket Spacecraft launched by Studio residents Michael Johnson, in partnership with Helen White, Seth Jackson, Laura Kriefman and others have now installed the first Spaceship vending machine in the Watershed foyer. Explorers who back the project will be able to personalise their own spacecraft by adding a picture or message to create their own unique design. They will be able to monitor progress throughout their mission with their own Pocket Mission Control app, tracking the progress of their spacecraft as it is designed, built in the lab and as it travels through space. You can find out more and back them on their kickstarter here, and pop into the Watershed bar if you’d like to see their space vending machine.

Then on Friday we were joined by our lovely Studio resident Ben Gwalchmai who spoke about his and James Wheale’s new storytelling App Fabler.  Fabler is a simple concept: the more you walk, the more you hear. When you stop, it stops. You are invited to move through stories literally. We will be publishing a write-up of the talk in the next few days so look out for it on our news page.

Coming up this Friday we have a very special #BristolProms - augmenting the orchestra Lunchtime Talk. Two of the digital innovators making experimental work for #BristolProms  will be joining us in the Studio to give a work-in-progress, sneaky peak at what we can expect during the proms. Filmmaker and Director John Durrant from BDH is developing From Every Angle, an intimate interpretation of a simultaneous live solo piano performance at Bristol Old Vic, using multiple close-up cameras and live vision mixing to bring you closer than ever before to an extraordinary of selections from Chopin's groundbreaking Études. Scott Fletcher from Play Nicely is creating a unique visual accompaniment to Max Richter’s The Four Seasons Recomposed. He describes it as ‘a fixed narrative built in Unity 3D with reactive elements controlled by the realtime audio/performance’ and recent testing with a stand in orchestra proved that this will be an extraordinary and unforgettable event. It’s set to be a brilliant talk so make sure you pop down to the Studio at 1pm. You can find out more about our Open Studio Fridays on the Studio website.

Finally don’t forget that we’ve got a competition running to find three fantastic new Pervasive Media Studio residents in two categories, with bursaries of £1000 & £500 available to successful candidates. We are looking for one experimental and energetic new company, startup or project team to come and undertake an intensive period of R&D here in the Pervasive Media Studio and we are also looking for two Graduate or New Talent residencies. You can find more details of how to apply on our website here.