Create & connect

Putting people and play at the heart of the city, Watershedis inviting all to join in the fun for this year’s Playable City Week. Here, we meet the six teams that will be animating the city, firing imaginations and sparking conversations...

Watershed, in partnership with MyWorld – a creative technology programme in the West of England funded by £30 million from UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Strength in Places Fund (SIPF) – are inviting you to play in Bristol this summer for Playable City Week.

From 3 –9 July, six playful creative technology prototypes will pop up at various locations around Bristol, designed to animate the city, fire imagination and spark vital conversations around inclusion, surveillance, climate change and the kind of cities we want to live in.

Sitting at the intersection of art, technology and culture, the installations have been developed by six teams who were each awarded £45,000 by MyWorld to create an urban prototype that puts connection, community and play at the heart of the city. They were developed as part of Playable City Sandbox, a shared development programme produced by Watershed. The six Playable City Sandbox commissions are:

HOW (NOT) TO GET HIT BY A SELF-DRIVING CAR

Where: M Shed When: 3 –7 July, 12pm –6pm

A street-based game that challenges anyone to avoid being detected as a pedestrian in the eye of an AI.

Creators: Tomo Kihara and Playfool

Squeeze Me

Where: Brandon Hill Park When: 4 –6 July, 4 –10pm; 7 –8 July, 2 –10pm; 9 July, 2 –6pm

Gigantic, inflatable and illuminated creatures will be wrapped around trees inviting passers-by to play by hugging, squeezing or poking them.

Creators: Air Giants

FIREFLIES, A GLITCH featuring ARCANE & SCREAMING COLOR

Where: Lakota Nightclub When: 5 –7 July, 10am –6pm

An invitation to join Firefly Odyssey, a tour company specialising in the observation of inter- dimensional wildlife.

Creators: GlitchAR, Arcane & Screaming Color

STREET PIXEL

Where: Watershed When: 6 –7 July, 10am –4pm

A magical interactive pavement that transforms urban spaces through light, sound and play.

Creators: Biome Collective

HOUSE OF WEAVING SONGS

Where: Trinity Community Garden When: 7 –8 July, 12 –6pm; 9 July, 12 –4pm dhaqan collective invites guests to step inside the House of Weaving Songs, a domed steel structure inspired by the Aqal, a nomadic Somali home.

Creators: dhaqan collective

ZOOMSCAPE ZOETROPE

Where: Queen Square When: 5 –6 July, 9pm –11pm In a work which asks us to consider our relationship with the natural world, night-time visitors will be invited to transform the trees in an urban square into living sculptures using only their own movements and light, seeming to enable these ‘lungs of the city’ to ‘breathe.’

Creators: Jack Wates and Thomas Blackburn

Playable City began in Bristol in 2012 and is now a global movement reaching over one million people across five continents –

Melbourne, Austin, Seoul, Tokyo, São Paulo. Previous commissions have seen audiences text secrets to postboxes, dance with their own shadows under lampposts and jump with a pack of origami-like digital beasts projected onto pavements. These six new prototypes represent the latest stage of the Playable City journey, using technology to consider the future of our cities by reusing city infrastructure and re-appropriating smart city technologies to encourage conversations between local communities and the places they live and work.

Oscar De Mello, MyWorld Operations Director, says: “It’s been genuinely inspiring to see these Playable Cities projects come to life. The companies and individuals involved each bring a unique perspective and design approach to their installations and the results show the range of creative talent and skill available here in the West of England. Huge thanks to Watershed for enabling this opportunity, and I can’t wait to go and play!” n

• To find out more about Playable City visit: playablecity.com