In April and May 2020 we have succesfully applied for support to push our digital work. We are hugely grateful to 101OutdoorArts and Arts Council England Emergency Funds for this support to keep us going and make new work. This is in the context of C-19 and our aim is to get playful, creative and somehow meaningful experiences to audiences even within the restrictions on events that we feel must go on well into 2021.

This work builds out of the development that started when Dr Ruairi Glynn invited us to guest lecture on the Interactive Architecture MA at the Bartlett/UCL many years ago – when we were resident artists with the Puppet Centre Trust. This work continued with our Celestial Sound Cloud with technologist Kyle Hirani and now that we are not allowed to chase Slugs and Pancakes around we’re knuckling down to skill up.

The outcome of this body of work will be

1) The Weather stage 1 – an Augmented Reality experience. A smartphone App (being developed by Simon Graham) that will allow audinece to place a sculpture anywhere they like and develop its shape and sound scape thorugh what will effectively be a game. We hope to get a Prototype version for people to download, play and tell us what they thought by Sepetember with a more beautiful and better working version by November. (Stage 2 is to create a new actual sculpture and live experience that will tour from late 2021 with the App overlaying it and adding even more fun)

2) Haptics – a body of research into communication thorugh the senses, primarily touch – can we hold hands over teh internet? This involves co director Pete working with mentoring from Nick Sparks to create prototype hand held devices packed with sensors and motors – run by Arduino – that can communicate short and long distances. Once they work we will make a stopry and a game – a show – around this. We envisage performing at events with a big box of them for audinece and even better sending out packs (maybe compelete with soldering iron) for people to build them at home, start the story and the game, learn some fun skills and bring them to an event to join in. A bit like robot wars maybe with less wars, and robots, but some Craig Charles…

3) Reserach. We (mainly Marianne) will spend time talking to people and resreaching. Talking to families, individuals, couples, companies and festivals about how they consume digital art, what would they like to do, what works for a festival, what games would they actually invest their precious time in. This will feed into teh above and future work.

As all of our touring has been cancelled  (thanks to the bookers who paid cancellation fees – when they did not always have to).