AR Arts Festival:
Watch This Space!
Aug - Dec 2020, London & Remote
Coming Soon to landmarks around Central London! Playlines is currently putting the finishing touches onto a groundbreaking Augmented Reality app, created in partnership with some of the UK's biggest cultural institutions, which will allow anyone to access artistic masterpieces in a socially-distant outdoor arts festival in London!
Watch this space for more announcements and more on how we're doing our bit to help create new kinds of arts access and kick-start the cultural sector with new technology for a post-Pandemic world!
Playlines
National Gallery Residency 2020
Apr-Aug 2020. London & Remote
Amidst the unprecedented conditions of lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic, We're really proud to have been working in partnership with the National Gallery, helping to develop new ways for remote, socially-distancing and international audiences to access the nation's art treasures via Augmented Reality.
On March 10th 2020, Playlines began a residency at National Gallery X, a partnership between the National Gallery and King's College to support new research and digital prototypes to answer the challenge, "What will the gallery of the future look like?" Our initial area of research was into concepts around Multichannel Curation. As Augmented Reality pioneers, we have seen how AR allows creators to re-contextualise our audiences' experience of everyday spaces with digital story, gameplay and adventure. Now, we wanted to investigate the "non-zero-sum information design" capabilities of AR, and build new tools for Gallery curators to curate the digital dimension of the gallery's spaces.
Then, on March 16th, Lockdown began in the UK. At the Gallery's request, by March 27th we'd pivoted, and redesigned our idea to explore the same multichannel curation concepts while delivering an at-home remote "digital visit" experience, allowing users to digitally "hang" a masterpiece on their own walls in AR, then explore a deep and diverse 'constellation' of cross-referential content tagged to that artwork through a groundbreaking AR interface.
Working with a fantastic group of curators, artists, engineers, storytellers and musicians, we developed an app containing 60+ minutes of multivalent insight and interpretation, and developed a robust remote Beta testing process to test with real National Gallery patrons, with a particular focus on 65yo+ users. In testing, we were able to achieve 25min+ of engagement per user per painting in a digital encounter with the artwork as a 3D, to-scale object in the user's own home, accompanied by a diverse, cross-referential cross-section of National Gallery's amazing scholarship.
Bose presents: CONSEQUENCES @ Raindance Festival
Sept 2019. London
As part of our ongoing development partnership with Bose AR, we created a brand-new version of our immersive location-based AR hip-hop experience CONSEQUENCES in the Immersive Gallery in the iconic OXO TOWER as part of Raindance Festival 2019. CONSEQUENCES is our groundbreaking location-based audio AR rap experience, created in collaboration with record-breaking, multi-award-winning MC Harry Shotta.
And for the first time ever, our Raindance installation was presented in full spatial audio via Bose's brand-new Frames wearables, a first-of-its-kind combination of real-world performance, location-based interactive AR audio and spatial audio to create a fully immersive layer of choose-your-own-adventure told entirely through rap.
We're really proud to have been part of the Official Selection and we helped start the party off right by bringing along Harry Shotta to kick off the Raindance Immersive Weekend. Harry, our cofounder Rob and Exec Producer Muki also held a masterclass at the historic Regent Street Cinema to discuss creating the project.
Opera Beyond:
Keynote 2019
Oct 2019. Helsinki
Opera Beyond have posted a video of Playlines Creative Director Rob Morgan's keynote at the inaugural Opera Beyond conference convened by the Finnish National Opera & Ballet. Rob presented an overview of best practices and design insights developed by playlines in implementing hybrid mixed-reality performance, designing porous fiction/nonfiction barriers, and creating narratives that transform players into protagonists.
Digital Catapult: SURROUNDSCAPES
Aug 2019. London & Belfast
Playlines was invited to take part in the first-ever Surroundscapes showcase at Digital Catapult, to showcase the most innovative work being done in immersive audio and sound-led immersive experiences.
We installed a version of our audio AR rap experience CONSEQUENCES in Digital Catapult's office in London and at the historic Ormeau Baths in Belfast, transforming both spaces into an interactive narrative rave with multiple potential endings.
Co-founder Rob Morgan: "I remember when i was just starting out , coming to breakfast briefings and events at Digital Catapult, gatecrashing some of them, and wondering if I'd ever be able to work here officially. It's amazing to be able to showcase our work here." Our inclusion in Surroundscapes confirms Playlines as one of the most innovative immersive audio companies in the UK.
CONSEQUENCES AR:
London Showcase
May 2019. London
Get ready to follow the rhymes. Playlines proudly presented the UK premiere of CONSEQUENCES, in partnership with Bose AR, at London's iconic Club Fire.
A sold-out invitation-only audience of media insiders experienced a brand new new kind of night out with CONSEQUENCES, our immersive Augmented Reality hip-hop experience created by Playlines in collaboration with multi-award-winning MC Harry Shotta.
Imagine Silent Disco meets Secret Cinema, a mix of cutting-edge AR technology with real-world immersive performances and explorable choose-your-own-adventure storylines, all told through character-driven rap.
Become a character in an exclusive Grime concept album from one of the UK's hottest artists. Choose your path, follow the rhymes, and discover one of six possible endings.
To learn more about CONSEQUENCES and find out upcoming dates, get in touch.
OPERA BEYOND 2019:
"Displacement"
May 2019. Helsinki
Playlines was really proud to be invited to the inaugural Opera Beyond conference in beautiful Helsinki to discuss the immersive and tech-driven future of opera with the industry's leading lights.
Playlines Creative Director Rob Morgan gave a keynote on interactive narrative design, and we installed a pop-up demo of our immersive hip-hop opera CONSEQUENCES within the Opera House.
We also took part in the pitch contest, developing a concept for "Displacement", a new IoT-driven immersive mini-opera inspired by the effects of Climate Change on Rob's home town, and were awarded second place out of 161 applicant teams. We'll get 'em next time!
"Displacement" is currently in early development.
BOSE AR
Developer Showcase
November 2018. Framingham, Mass. USA
As part of our ongoing Developer Partnership with Bose AR, we were invited to the first-ever Bose AR Developer Showcase in Framingham, Mass.
Using their brand-new prototype Creator Tool we created a pop-up GPS-driven version of our location-based AR hip-hop experience CONSEQUENCES in and around the Bose Campus in Framingham, and exhibited alongside some of the most innovative audio and AR companies in the world.
As an audio-led immersive studio on the front lines of audio AR, Playlines is contributing design insight and user journeys for the Creator Tool; we've also had an exclusive chance to play around with some of Bose's other upcoming prototypes, and Bose has even shown their support for us by sending us stacks and stacks of their brand-new spatial audio Frames wearables well before their street date, to help us show off CONSEQUENCES and develop its spatial audio potential. Thanks guys!
CONSEQUENCES @ Future of Storytelling Summit
October 2018. New York
We were so proud to be invited to the world-renowned Future of Storytelling Festival in New York to mount the Pop-Up Premiere of CONSEQUENCES, our immersive location-based AR hip-hop experience created by Playlines in collaboration with record-breaking, multi-award-winning UK MC Harry Shotta.
Our international team of artists, programmers, rap fans and weirdos came from all over Europe with our equipment, iBeacons, handsets and standees to Staten Island, NY (birthplace of the Wu-Tang) to transform the beautiful neoclassical buildings of Snug Harbor into a choose-your-own-adventure AR rave, with multiple interactive storylines told entirely through rap and six possible endings to explore.
It was a privilege to premiere our modular site-specific show among some of the world's leading storytellers, and we were beyond honoured to be finalists for the "Innovation in Storytelling" Prize alongside such amazing projects as "I am a Man" and "Florence".
