voidspace dispatches 14: voices from the void, a Lynchian night drive, and dancing with furries
interactive arts
It’s been an exciting week here in the voidpsace. The voices in the walls want to give a big thank you to everyone who helped support our crowdfunder to make voidspace live a reality! Priority booking has gone out to funders, with general release to follow: watch this (void)space and mark Sunday 9 June on your calendar.
We are also thrilled to announce the voidpsace’s first hard copy publication, Faultlines by Mark Ward. A queer interactive choose your own sonnet about picking through the fragments for the truth when love goes sour, we believe that this one is a first in interactive literature. Publication date is 3 March 2024, and you can pre-order here.
In the meantime, read out interview with Unwired Dance and delve into our play at home experiences: games that focus on late night radio and that surreal 4am feeling: when a deeper truth is only a blink away and each word is freighted with meaning in the dark.
voidspace at home
interactive arts to experience at your own pace
voidspace in conversation: Unwired Dance
We speak to dance-tech pioneer Clemence Debaig, and dance artist and collaborator Livia Masserelli, about their exploration of the intersection between dance and technology in physical, virtual and hybrid spaces.
The conversation covers topics including how to remember the body in the virtual world, how tech can augment our sense of connection in performance, and the surreal experience of dancing with the furries in VR.
Read previous voidspace conversations with the people from Punchdrunk, Parabolic Theatre, Coney, Jury Games, Now Play This, and many others.
VOID 1680 AM by Bannerless Games
Night after night, you sit alone with your thoughts, your music, and a microphone. Whether you come to your radio show with somber attitude or joyful spirit, you use the music that moves you to etch something fleeting and beautiful into the big empty.
You never know who is listening.
There are other voices in the darkness. With a deck of cards, a six-sided die and a stack of music, you will build a playlist, invent and interact with Callers to your show, and evolve their stories over as many broadcasts as you like. No matter their motivations, they simply must be heard. In that way, you are very much alike.
Glitchikers: First Drive by Silverstring Media
Have you ever driven alone late at night? Found yourself thinking thoughts you'd never have anywhere else? Weird music playing on the radio? Glitchhikers is about that experience. Every drive is a journey. Every thought a conversation.What do you see when you look out at the night sky?
A long night drive. The radio, the stars, and some very strange companions.
Lynchian vibes and philosophical dialogue combine to create and unnerving and thought provoking experience.
voidspace explores
interactive arts listings
This week
The Re-birthing Room by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley - a new immersive gaming experience using ‘hacked’ VR controllers, turning an individualised screen experience into a large scale projection mapped environment which requires the audience to work collaboratively. Set within a forest, the game challenges the audience to be ‘reborn in authenticity’. Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice seeks to archive the Black trans experience to imagine Black trans lives in environments that centre their bodies- those living, those passed, and those that have been forgotten. Gaming as an artform, pathfinder and educational tool.
Studio Voltaire, London
31 January - 28 April 2024
BOX: Northern LARP Festival - a small chamber LARP festival giving participants the opportunity to participate in two short-form, art-house style LARPS
Theatre Deli, London
3 February 2024
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
Until 3 March 2024
Jury Games, live - play Jury Duty or The Inquest, sift through evidence and interview defendants to get to the truth. See interview with creator Tom Black here
Theatre Deli, London
Until 24 March 2024
Poetry Pharmacy - pop-up poetry dispensary. The best medicine.
Lush Studio, Soho, London
Until March 2023
TIME QUEST: Step into Battersea Arts Centre and experience a time-bending, mind-wobbling journey! Hidden around the building are portals to possible futures, and it’s up to you to uncover their secrets. Embark on an adventure to explore, listen, and discover three voices from another time hidden around the building.
Battersea Arts Centre, London
Ongoing
Next week
Project Intimacy by Riptide: a carefully curated, 2-week-long, pervasive WhatsApp-experience which pairs two like-minded strangers together anonymously. Participants fill in a detailed pre-experience questionnaire which seeks to find out their likes/dislikes, values and beliefs.
Remote
7 February - 20 February 2024; 6 March - 19 March 2024
POV: you are an ai achieving consciousness by CirqueSaw - award-winning digitally native, immersive, and interactive piece exploring the intersection of art, philosophy, and technology, using a custom interactive platform to add new layers of interactivity to virtual performance. No one audience member can dictate the experience, but everyone’s interactions together define it.
Online
8-10 February 2024
Dark With Excessive Bright by The Royal Ballet - immersive-interactive ballet by Robert Binet that allows the audience to shape their experience by choosing their point of view, as they experience the performance on their feet
Lindbury Theatre, London
10-20 February 2024
February 2024
Into the Dreamlands - You are invited to a demonstration of the alleged powers of a dreamer. Offered anything you can dream of, what will you do? What will you learn? And what can you afford to lose? New interactive immersive show is a collaboration between the writers behind Come Bargain With Uncanny Things and Locksmith’s Dream, set in the world of their upcoming Lovecraftian experience The Key of Dreams.
The Drayton Arms, London
12 February 2024
A Pinch of VAULT - festival of new theatre, including interactive dating game show Do You Fancy Them or Are They Just In the Vicinity? and more
Various locations, London
12 - 25 February 2024
Bacchanalia by Sleepwalk Immersive - immersive theatre wunderkind Sleepwalk return with a second run of their sell-out psychedelic Punchdrunk-inspired retelling of Euripides’ Bacchae
Crypt, London
20 February - 10 March 2024
To Fly Out in the Heat of the Day by Lou Barnell - The audience join Barnell in an immersive sensory universe inhabiting her 'live dream'. A wearable sound-material sculpture made using reusable thermoplastic, and breakthrough electromyography sensors, creates a body-sonic score.
Theatre Deli, London
24 February 2024
Blood on the Clocktower - a tense and engaging social bluffing experience for those who delight in deduction and deception. Meet new people, or lie to your closest friends. Kill with grace, and die with dignity.
Theatre Deli, Sheffield
24 February 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
March 2024
Interactive Soup - social and micro-funding platform for interactive performance makers. With soup.
Theatre Deli, Leadenhall Street, London
5 March 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
Darkfield: ARCADE - ARCADE is the latest immersive audio experience from DARKFIELD. Using the nostalgic 8-bit aesthetic of 1980’s video games, ARCADE’s interactive narrative explores the evolving relationship between players and avatars.
Lakeside Arts, Nottingham
12 - 24 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
Later 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 Key of Dreams - highly immersive and interactive luxury 24 hour experience set in a 17th century manor house, on the border of dream and waking
Treowen House, Wales
April - October 2024
BOUND - Immersive physical theatre work spread over five floors, exploring grief
OXO Bargehouse, London
25 August - 7 September 2024
voidspace writes
create interactive art: interactive writing, games and exhibit submission calls
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.