Theatre Sandbox – making space for great ideas
Theatre Sandbox is a commissioning scheme for six theatre artists & companies to research and develop new ideas which use pervasive media technologies.
News
- Save the date… Theatre Sandbox Showcase Event
From 2-5pm on Friday 12th November 2010, we will be holding an event to showcase the Theatre Sandbox scheme at end of its first year. The event will feature video documentation of our six projects, reflections on the successes and key areas of learning, and panel debates with the participating artists, venues, technology partners, and advisory group members.
Followed, of course, by drinks and a chance to network informally with Theatre Sandbox artists and technologists. Tickets will be available soon, but do put the date in your diary.
- Video interviews on DShed
Back at the beginning of July we grabbed a few minutes with each of our commissioned artists to chat with them about their projects. The resulting videos are now online to view over on Dshed. Its great to hear them describe their projects in their own words, and to get a snapshot of their hopes and plans right at the start of the Theatre Sandbox process.
Here’s one of the videos, featuring Duncan Speakman and Paul Clarke. See the others here.
- Theatre Sandbox monthly roundup
Sonic labyrinths, text that follows you around the stage and elusive unicorns from another dimension. These are just a few of the pervasive experiences that have been emerging from the first intensive month of activity at Theatre Sandbox.
All six companies have agreed to tear down the walls and share the work they are doing over the three months of research and development. You can view all of their blogs in full here but I’ll do my best to give you a flavour of the projects so far:
- The forces of creative tension: Experience design in pervasive media
Jo Reid, Creative Directer of Calvium has worked for years with artists and creatives on creating technology driven experiences, so we asked her to join us at the Theatre Sandbox community day and share some of her insight into how to effectively develop, test and refine ideas:
Try things out in the actual space – testing things theoretically is not good enough: When HP Labs worked with Duncan Speakman on Schminky they started off using ultrasonic positioning to connect people in Watershed’s cafe. Early testing discovered that the clinking of metal cutlery interfered with the technology, if they hadn’t found this out early it could have been a lengthy and expensive dead end. Read more…
- Second community day: progress, thoughts and questions
Today is the second Theatre Sandbox community day, bringing together participants, venues and advisory group to share learning and questions. Later on we have invited Jo Reid of Calvium to lead a session on user testing and iteration – we are a bit worried that the process of making theatre may be sometimes at odds with developing work which uses technology and needs lots of testing and iteration, so want to give some support around this.
The day started with a round up from each of the participants about progress, which I have summarised here. You can read more on each of the projects blogs: Read more…
