We had a very busy and welcoming week at Pervasive Media Studio! We’re thrilled to be here among the other New Talent residents, Studio Residents, and the whole team.

In our blog we’re going to be sharing the development of our project over the next three months, as already within the first week we’ve open up hundreds of questions to explore. Here’s what we found.

Initially, at the beginning of the week when we discussed our project, we discussed ideas of developing the technology within the Larks so that they could wirelessly communicate and eventually be able to create collaborative games between members of the public. Although this is something we still are aiming to do, we are now thinking more about the experience that wraps around our artwork; how can our artwork, the public and the environment create an event or experience?

One-to-one meetings with Victoria and David were really helpful in unlocking these ideas, as were brainstorming sessions with the rest of the residents. This got us thinking about the following:

    •    How can we use existing street furniture and architecture as tools to encourage social interactions between strangers?

    •    How can we use play to encourage people to think about place in a new way?

    •    How are public spaces used, and how could we make them more playful/social?



We went on a walk to a few sites, most notably The Bear Pit. We were interested in how recent artistic activity in that site had made it a friendlier and safer place to be, and turned around a hostile environment into something altogether different. These inbetween/disused spaces are something we would like to explore more during our time at Pervasive Media Studio.

We have lots to think about next week! We will start by checking out different sites around Bristol. David Haylock gave us some suggestions as starting points, these range from alleyways and open parks. We will take our Larks out to visit these spaces to see how people react, and start looking at different ways we can encourage communication for the passerby.  We also think some paper prototyping is in order to see how we can encourage chance interactions between people - watch this space for photos and videos next week!