voidspace dispatches 10: Jury games, playful reflections, and memories to last an (after)lifetime
interactive arts
Happy New Year from the voidspace! We hope you are all starting 2024 with a bang.
New year is traditionally a time for introspection and fresh starts, and our play at home experiences all show how interactive experiences can all hold up a mirror to our inner worlds, and spark genuine positive change.
As a companion piece to this sort of deep contemplative play, we also have a podcast that delves into the science behind what makes immersive and interactive experiences so impactful.
The flipside to the New Year is the chance to take action, and our conversation with Tom Black, one of the creators of Jury Games and Crisis, What Crisis?, explores how audiences can take meaningful action to affect the outcome of these shows.
Whether your gaze is turned inwards or towards action and impact, you’re in for a wild ride.
voidspace at home
interactive arts to experience at your own pace
voidspace in conversation: We welcome Tom Black, interactive theatre maestro with credits including Parabolic Theatre’s Crisis, What Crisis? and Jury Games to his name, into the voidspace
Tom shares with us insights into the trick to maintaining audience agency while keeping a show feeling dramatically satisfying, how to manage the ordered chaos of a show where the audience is a genuine part of the action, and what tiddlywinks has to do with the downfall of a government.
Find more voidspace conversations here
A frozen landscape. A buried statue. A mysterious voice. In the In-Between, your journey is only just beginning.
Billed as “the mental health game”, Betwixt is an atmospheric and carefully crafted narrative adventure that draws on a combination of storytelling, powerful imagery and therapeutic techniques to spark reflection, self awareness and the possibility of change.
The writing is of such good quality that I played for the story, to discover what happened next to my protagonist and their mysterious interlocutor, but came away with some genuine insights.
Afterlife Experience, by Coney
Made as a companion piece to the 2021 stage production of After Life by Headlong at the National Theatre, based on the original film.
In this world, death leads to a bureaucratic limbo where you are tasked to choose one memory from your life. This memory is then reconstructed for you to spend eternity inside, on loop.
The Facilitation helps you choose a memory for your own personal after-life. The Archive invites you to listen to the memories contributed by other people.
A meditative, and ultimately profound, experience.
Unseen Being by Kinda Studios
Weekly podcast talking to artists and scientists about what happens in our brains and bodies when we experience the world around us
Bridges the gap between arts, neuroscience and wellbeing in fascinating ways, and sheds a lot of light on why immersive and interactive arts experiences can work so powerfully.
Food for thought for audiences and creators of immersive and interactive work, alike.
voidspace live 2024 is coming! A one day festival of interactive arts in London, Spring 2024, with interactive performances, workshops, games and more.
Click below to find out more about the festival, and how you can be a part of making it happen (and bag priority booking or exclusive merch, or just be a friend of the void 🖤).
The voidspace is free to read, and we do not charge submission fees. We need help to run the festival fairly, while keeping tickets affordable.
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, or find it useful, please consider supporting us, if you can.
voidspace explores
interactive arts listings
This week
Lennox Mutual by Candlehouse Collective - Welcome to Lennox Mutual: a Life En-surance company, here to help you make the most of the time you have. We offer policies – to get yours, all you have to do is make an appointment.
For more information, book a one-on-one phone session. Our live representatives are trained to make you feel, make you think, and of course, make you smile. You’ve never experienced service like ours.
Online
5 January 2024 - 3 March 2024
AI: Who’s Looking After Me? - an exhibition featuring interactive works from Blast Theory, Fast Familiar and more, taking a questioning and playful look at the ways artificial intelligence is already shaping so many areas of our lives - from our healthcare and justice systems to how we look after our pets.
Science Gallery, London
Until 20 January 2024
Poetry Pharmacy - pop-up poetry dispensary. The best medicine.
Lush Studio, Soho, London
Until 6 January 2023
Hammam by Anu Productions - In an entirely re-imagined Peacock Theatre in the heart of Dublin, audiences will traverse the depths of the destroyed buildings of O’Connell Street to explore one of the most contentious elements of the Republic of Ireland’s past and its deeply enduring legacy in the present.
Abbey Theatre, Dublin
Until 6 January 2024
Artic Lumina: Winter in Motion - audio-visual installation transforming the space into an immersive winter utopia
ME London
Until 15 January 2024
The Ministry of Time Travel, by Coney - a series of adventures created at The National Archives for young people & families. Audiences are welcomed to the world of The Ministry of Time Travel (MOTT), a secret organisation based at the heart of The National Archives, to use the evidence from the past available there, to safeguard time itself
Online or at The National Archives
Ongoing
Bubble Planet - multisensory, interactive exhibition themed around bubbles
Wembley, London
Ongoing
TIME OUT .12 - Timebased and Interactive Media meets Ars Eletronica - Exhibition of diverse interactive artistic media works
Ars Electronica Centre, Linz, Austria
Ongoing
Digital Art Murals Unwired Studio / Bedford Creative Arts - series of AR murals inviting players to launch airships, fly planes and break into a bank vault and learn more about local Bedford history.
Bedford High Street (scan QR codes to play)
Ongoing
Next week
Super Normal Extra Natural by Requart and Rosenburg - A seemingly normal day starts to merge with a world of angels and demons, hope and pain, as dancers and singers are joined by Croydon locals to take over Whitgift Shopping Centre. Using headphones to connect to the soundtrack, audiences become a part of a surreal world that blurs the boundaries between reality and performance.
Whitgift Shopping Centre, Croydon
12 - 14 January 2024
Uli AP: Alien AI - an immersive, interactive performance and disruptive installation. Visitors experience a diverse range of interactions with the Alien AI mediated by real-time AI, interaction with a performer, live responsive sound and travelling VR headsets.
The Ugly Duck, London
13-14 January 2024
January 2024
A Magic Trick by Coney - A gentle yet impactful piece of play, that might help spark a small positive change in your life.
Online
Thursday 25 January 2024
Monday 29 January 2024
Later 2024
May Contain Food: May Contain You - Protein Dance - Protein transforms a local venue into a musical dining experience! Take a seat at decorated tables and watch, savour and digest the playful mix of dance, theatre and songs that unfolds around you.
Ashburton Arts Centre - 23 February 2024
Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington - 24 February 2024
Posh Club, Crawley (Extract only) - 27 February 2024
Blackwood Miners Institute, Caerphilly - 28 February 2024
AMATA, Falmouth - 9 March 2024
SpArc Theatre, Bishop’s castle - 17 March 2024
Norden Farm, Maidenhead - 27 March 2024
Memorial Hall - Letterston (Wales) - 29 March 2024
Cardigan (Wales) - 30 March 2024
Woolwich Works, London - 10 - 13 April 2024
SUB:VERSION / SURGE by Tom Dale Company - genre busting immersive / interactive dance
Nottingham Lakeside Arts - 27 February 2024
Bath Spa University - 29 February 2024
Barnesley Civic Theatre - 22 March 2024
Dance City, Newcastle - 2 May 2024
Curve, Leicester - 15 May 2024
Gingerline: Homecoming - interactive dining theatre, theme TBA
London
6 March - 28 April 2024
Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries - One-day symposium on Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs) with live game sessions. TTRPG designers, writers and artists address the hopes currently instilled in Tabletop Role Playing Games as a transformative activity
Arebyte Gallery, London
9 March 2024
Bridge Command - ever wanted to fly your own spaceship? Now’s your chance. From the creative team behind Parabolic Theatre
London
From 27 March 2024
Kiss, Marry, Kill, Dante or Die - site specific theatre re-imagining the first same-sex wedding in a UK prison
London - 16-26 April 2024
Reading - 30 April - 4 May 2024
Manchester - 10 May - 12 May
A.MAZE / Berlin - annual international arthouse games and playful media festival
Berlin
8 - 11 May 2024
New Media Writing Prize, annual Unconference. Theme: Inclusivity in digital literature - panels, workshops, hackathons, digital exhibits and more
14 - 15 May 2024
Online
The Locksmith’s Dream - highly immersive and interactive luxury 24 hour experience set in a 17th century manor house
Treowen House, Wales
Ongoing: 2024/25
voidspace live 2024 is coming! A one day festival of interactive arts in London, Spring 2024, with interactive performances, workshops, games and more.
Click below to find out more about the festival, and how you can be a part of making it happen (and bag priority booking or exclusive merch, or just be a friend of void 🖤).
The voidspace is free to read, and we do not charge submission fees. We need help to run the festival fairly, while keeping tickets affordable.
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, or find it useful, please consider supporting us, if you can.
voidspace writes
create interactive art
voidspace 9: General call for interactive fiction, poetry, anything else you can think of.
Can be as simple as a text doc, or as complex as you like, it just has to give your reader agency. Find resources here or check out past issues for inspiration.
Subs close 7 January 2024
A.MAZE: - Submit your game / interactive theatre piece / other playful media for exhibition and potential award selection by the festival committee
Subs close 31 January 2024
Cybernetic Forests: Models for making distance:
Models For Making Distance is a print zine gathering a multiplicity of manifestos, writing and instructions for art that confounds, confuses and misuses algorithmic systems for the pleasure of human observers or actors. It is a playful but earnest bid for placing distance between ourselves and the tools designed to measure us.
ARRG! (the Algorithmic Resistance Research Group) aims to create a low-cost paper publication gathering a variety of authors, activists and artists who navigate AI systems from a position of resistance. We are looking for those willing to contribute their work for documentation in this analog pamphlet among like-minded critics and digital malcontents.
Subs close: 1 March 2024
Annual online festival celebrating new interactive fiction
Intent to enter can be submitted until 1 March 2024
voidspace live 2024: special callout
Games, interactive fiction or other interactive work that would work well in a cafe setting to be exhibited at voidspace live
Email voidspacezine@gmail.com
Subs close 31 March 2024
Plotopolis - a new literary journal, publishing interactive fiction on chat platforms.
Subs: ongoing. One story published per quarter.
Other Interactive Fiction competitions and jams
Check out IF Wiki for a comprehensive and up to date list of IF comps and jams
Ongoing
Got an interactive event, game, or publication to share? Email us at voidspacezine@gmail.com to be included in future dispatches.