First Friday is a monthly social event open to anyone. These events are somewhere between the last meeting of the week and the first event of your weekend. You might meet an artist or an engineer, a school teacher or a city leader. It is a place to connect with someone you might not otherwise meet, and hear about stuff you didn’t already know. All are welcome - from inside and outside the city, online or in the Watershed building.

February's Event

Our February event coincides with the opening night of Bristol Light Festival. We invite you to join us for some informal sharings by our Studio Resident community. These sharings incorporate light in playful and unexpected ways. A perfect appetiser before going out to explore the festival!

Residents sharing work include:

Vincent Baidoo is a Creative Technologist and Transmedial Producer working with visuals and underrepresented narratives. Vince will be showcasing his 2nd iteration of his Dynamic Holographic prototype, where he has been developing software to explore the interactive potential of cutting-edge Holographic hardware.

Kathy Hinde is an interdisciplinary artist inspired by behaviours and phenomena found in nature expressed through installations that combine sound, sculpture, image and light. Kathy will be sharing her outdoor light and sound installation Chirp & Drift which comprises a flock of illuminated instruments that chatter in morse code messages.

Kaleider is a production studio that combines installation, live performance and digital in their artworks. They will be showing Twist and Shine, an interactive installation of giant, glowing sculptures for children and playful adults. Each sculpture can be twisted into different shapes, with audiences working together to move the pieces.

Liam Taylor-West is a composer and audiovisual artist. He will be showcasing Forest Fire, a piece created in collaboration with Dr Edward Crane, a specialist in probability, during Liam’s time as Artist-in-Residence with University of Bristol School of Mathematics.

Air Giants is a team of creatives and technologists who create living, breathing installations using their own expressive soft-robotic technology as a core medium. They will be showing videos and images of some of their recent projects, including Squeeze Me Playable City Bristol last summer.

Frazer Meakin is undertaking MyWorld Research Fellowship exploring the skills and opportunities young people need for a career in creative technologies, to inform the development of tailored educational programs and initiatives. At First Friday they’re keen to have informal chats with attendees to learn more about different career paths people have taken and what those currently working in the sector believe are the key skills needed.

People joining online can participate in short speed networking conversations, facilitated by our chat roulette style software. You will be paired up at random for a series of five minute conversations, one-to-one with other guests. There is an option to take a break between each chat and you are welcome to pop in and out whenever you like. It's fine to join the event late and leave the event early.

The hosted element of the event will finish at 18:00. After that, in person attendees are welcome to continue conversations in the Café & Bar.

About Pervasive Media Studio

The Pervasive Media Studio hosts an international community of over 100 artists, companies, technologists, and academics exploring experience design and creative technology. We are a space for risk taking and early ideas; for the kind of projects and questions that inhabit the meeting points of art, technology, and society.

Our projects span play, robotics, location-based media, food, connected objects, interactive documentary, new forms of performance and more.

We have an open plan studio with a culture if generosity, curiosity, and interruptibility. We believe that by clustering people together from a broad range of backgrounds, with differing skills, experience, and opinions, all of our ideas become better.

Join the First Friday mailing list here.

This event is supported by MyWorld.

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