Five Things now it's The Future

Groundhog day in the Subtitle department (#1)

Time went slowly, then it went very fast and suddenly 2020 was 2021, which at first glance looks rather like 2020.

Let that not dishearten you! Furious creative energy continues to bubble around the world and if all else fails, there is always Sourdough.

Thank you for joining me on this quick ramble through five things:

1. End-of-year lists are dead (long live end-of-year lists)

The worst are gratuitous and backwards-looking but these two are great.

• The fact-filled snack: Tom Whitwell’s 52 Things I Learned. Who knew the inventor of the pixel regretted making it square?

• Main course: a 2020 List of Immersive Projects from Colombia Digital Storytelling Lab. A pleasingly comprehensive reminder that the pandemic didn’t press pause on creativity.

I really enjoyed Eschaton (bizarro New York cabaret club via Zoom), Telephone (intimate and playful storytelling) and Plymouth Point (head-scratchy, scary detective game) but it was going inside Hopper’s Nighthawks that felt most like a glimpse of the future.

Live action film, green screen, VR and Unreal engine combine

2. While we’re on “immersive”

The term (aspects of Marmite if you ask me) means many things to many people, exemplified by the 60+ projects above.

My work in this sphere went from leading a PRELOADED team on the delivery of four bespoke hardware/software games for Nottingham Castle to helping Marshmallow Laser Feast explore the future of live theatre with some epic partners. March will be a big month for them.

Bespoke Bow construction with PRELOADED, Artists + Engineers & MDM Props

Amidst all that I’m working with <Big London Museum> to define their immersive strategy, which has involved chatting with Design IO (of Connected Worlds fame), TeamLab, Myra Appannah and many more. I’m here if you want to pick my brain on immersive things.

Ticket prices for benchmark “immersive” arts & culture experiences

3. Video conference bla-bla

Like it or lump it, teleconferencing (too retro?) is here to stay.

Matt Webb states the obvious here, as he often does, in a way that no-one else has: We need better interop(erability). Email works, why not video?

Take your Zooming up a gear with this three-page Reddit-curated PDF of games to play remotely. The best one? Longwave is a quick, collaborative word game with a Dixit-like core mechanic that fuelled some excellent debate when I last played.

4. Doodle-wander for wellbeing

I tried the Wicks workout (too ouchy) and the Wim Hof wild swim (tricky in lockdown) but the humble stroll was my survival tactic of the year. Slow Ways is a beautiful scheme to make this even easier (and practical).

Precisely one year before our beloved PM announced Lockdown-v1.0-Internal-Use-Only I was beginning a 500k walk through France & Spain. Looking back on it a year later under lockdown, day by day, was a real tonic. I don’t (can’t?) meditate but stopping to quickly sketch what I saw turned into an incredibly rewarding (and meditative) process.

I invite you to grab a pen and go for a doodle-wander in 2021!

Bloody Bamboo Everywhere (Chemin de Stevenson, France)

5. The future of education

Lockdown-v3.0-Final_B-Master_BJ has put yet another spanner in the school works and my heart goes out to the families on the front line.

While this doesn’t help with their immediate challenge, it’s a lovely short film about a different approach to education:

Mitchel Resnick @mres

"Learning to Love Learning and Embrace Uncertainty": new video highlights how and why people need to shift the ways they think about education and learning vimeo.com/328370243

---

Thanks for reading. Reply and say hi! Let me know what you’re up to.

All the best,

B.

PS: There were 10 of you at the time of writing. When I was 10 I wanted to be a farmer, which is seeming less and less like a daft idea. There are 30 of you now!