“Imagine a Jukebox that plays stories instead of records, and allows you to choose the chapters you want.” (DShed)

Theatre Jukebox is an arcade-style cabinet that tells stories in a unique way. RFID tags hidden inside a selection of cards allow the machine to trigger top-down projection and audio specific to each card. Audience members are invited to choose from the selection of cards and have control over how many and in which order they wish the stories to be played. If you play one card, you experience a two-minute, self-contained, unique narrative. If you continue to play, narrative connections begin to build between cards, revealing a bigger picture.

Theatre Jukebox is a platform, any number of curated experiences could be produced to play on it. The first curation is an autobiographical story based on a box of family records belonging to the artists. Brother and sister, Barney and Lucy Heywood, co-run Stand + Stare Collective, and their family treasure box is a rich source of inspiration containing letters and drawings; sketch books and photographs; newspaper clippings; diaries; memoirs; and artifacts that date back more than 600 years. Their first Jukebox is magical, curated to reveal changing ideas of family, technology and society since the 1900’s.

Theatre Jukebox was developed through a Micro-residency at Pervasive Media Studio, supported by Arts Council England in June 2011. Micro-residencies enable artists to rapidly develop ideas, within the collaborative environment of the Studio. It provides a platform for critical and technical investigation and experimentation, and a forum in which new ideas can get off the ground.

Since completing the residency, Stand + Stare have stayed on as Studio residents to continue developing the project and in July 2011, exhibited the work at Bristol Old Vic, as part of Ferment.

Read the project journal on the Pervasive Media Studio website.