Robin Thorn (they/them), working as Thawney, is a Bristol-based creative technologist, musician and designer exploring spatial audio, haptics and accessible music technology. Their Spatial Audio System uses custom omnidirectional loudspeakers, amplification and multichannel playback to create shared immersive listening environments that audiences can move through.

Alongside this, Robin develops haptics systems that translate sound and movement into physical vibration, extending immersive audio beyond hearing alone. Their work combines electronics, programming, speaker design and interaction design, using purpose-built hardware to explore
how sound can be felt, shared and experienced differently across space through bodies, rooms, movement and community.

Panopticon is a surreal psychological experience exploring the metaphor of the mind as a prison. Set inside a tall structure, the film draws the viewer into a series of dimly lit and oddly shaped cells – each inhabited by symbolic objects, animated fragments of memory, desire, fear, and control. A cigarette, a wallet, a pair of scissors, a bone… Each cell holds a fragment of a larger subconscious narrative.

Filmed as a 360° video in miniature cardboard sets and animated using stop-motion techniques, Panopticon combines handcrafted German-expressionism-esque aesthetics with digital compositing to create an unsettling and immersive space. The VR format places the viewer in position of quiet authority – or surveillance – within the prison’s centre.

Credits

Directed by: Martina Klánová
Animation: James Wheeler, Martina Klánová, Jakub Kajnowski
Model making: Leo Crumbie, Madison Rowe
Music by: Liam O’Connell
Clarinet, bass clarinet: Ewan Metcalfe
Trumpet: Walter Feeney
Piano: Shayna D’Silva
Accordion: Thomas Hodson
Violin: Rhia Thomas
Cello: George Owen
Producer: Natasha R Davis

Made at the University of the West of England.

Metamorphic Avatars is a short VR experience that allows users to test out various avatar types. Have a mess around in the mirror and try out a range of characters and animals, from a snake to… Kirby? The magic under the hood is part of my personal ongoing VR development efforts and is but a
snapshot of a larger collection of systems the need proper public testing. The ultimate goal is to support people with varying body measurements to fluidly rescale into any avatar of their choosing, no matter how non-standard or non-humanoid they may be.

Credits

Conrad Wilson - Reality Unleashed

An immersive VR journey through an ocean shaped by the four seasons. Changing colours, movement, and marine life create a dreamlike experience that invites visitors to explore nature as an evolving emotional landscape.

Credits

Tina Peng

Beyond the Screen: Redefining XR Through Haptics and Spatial Sound

This project explores 3DoF force-feedback haptics and spatial audio via the Senmag 9D Stylus to construct non- visual VR experiences, advancing inclusive design and spatial accessibility. Set in an abandoned hospital, the high-fidelity Hospital Maze simulation studies how Blind and Visually
Impaired (BVI) users navigate complex environments using non-visual percepts. Operating as a virtual haptic cane, the stylus allows users to physically feel walls, doors, and furniture textures. Developed in Unity with custom safety parameters to prevent harsh force feedback on wall impacts,
the project investigates how touch and sound can guide intuitive spatial navigation when vision is removed.

Credits

Creators : Tanish Raorane, Alex Thompson, Dev Raju

Mentor : Dr. Kyle Keane

Forkbeard Fantasy: An Immersive Reinterpretation is a 15- minute seated VR experience rebuilding the archive of Forkbeard Fantasy, a British company that combined theatre, film, animation and puppetry until it closed in 2012 after its arts funding was withdrawn. Developed with the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, the piece uses photogrammetry and digital reconstruction to bring
characters, props and footage from the archive back into motion. The audience moves between three theatrical perspectives in front of the stage, backstage, and on stage as a decaying archive performs itself around them. A physical exhibition of original archive material surrounds the
headsets.

Credits

Written & Directed by Harry Clarke
Technical Lead & VR Application: Bhuvan Srinivas Chandrababu
3D Artists: Aseel El-Qirem, Echo Li & Harry Clarke
Archival Scans: Echo Li & Aseel El-Qirem
Lead Archivist: Rosie Smith
Music by: Lol Coxhill, Forkbeard Fantasy collaborator, performer and composer

Developed with the University of Bristol Theatre Collection

This project is a VR route-setting tool for indoor climbing gyms, designed to make the creation and management of climbing routes more intuitive and immersive. It allows users to create, modify, and climb routes within a virtual climbing gym environment, with the system remembering previously created routes through persistent session management. The tool enables climbing holds and volumes to be positioned directly onto virtual walls, providing an interactive alternative to traditional route-setting methods. By combining immersive VR interaction with persistent route
storage, the project explores how virtual reality can support both route creation and climbing practice in a virtual climbing environment.

Credits

Javier Rodríguez Lavandeira

FLOCK is an evolving interactive artwork for shared public spaces.

One large screen. Many people. Many phones. One flock of birds.

Each person influences the motion of one bird. As one hundred people participate over time, their individual choices shape the motion and behaviour of the flock, creating a unique final artwork from a shared, live experience.

Credits

Created by: Terence Reilly

This is an unmanned exhibit, just go there, you will enjoy yourself, I promise.

Credit

Dominique Vyborna

Step into a grand vertical expanse where time unwinds in reverse as you drop down a magnificent historical abyss. Instead of flying forward, you experience a controlled descent through three distinct architectural eras: starting among the intricate patterns of the Islamic era, passing through the imposing columns of the Greco-Roman period, and descending into the monumental carved stone of Ancient Egypt. By leveraging natural gravity and vertical parallax, this immersive descent mirrors an archaeological excavation where physical strata rise past your field of view, turning a continuous plunge into the depths of history into an awe-inspiring ascent of cultural understanding.

Credits

Ahmed T Fathy – Associate Professor in Digital Media Design & Head of the Game Design Track, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire hosted by Global Academic Foundation

Badr El Sherwani – Concept Artist & Film/Television Set Designer

The development stages of drawing have remained the same throughout human existence. The art of our ancestors sings through the first drawings of our children, all of them following the same trajectory for 20,000 years: handprints to scribbles to spiral to circles to radial forms to perpendicular lines to human and animal representative forms. Imprints invites you to return to crafting these fundamental structures, and to continue the visual conversation with our ancestors.

Credits

Created by Beth Lewis

Inspired by 'First Drawings: Genesis of Visual Thinking' by Sylvia Fein

"They that shall be actors in this massacre / shall wear white crosses on their burgonets”

A prototype 360º Virtual Reality experience.

Taking advantage of local and international political turmoil, a cynical political operator exploits violent tensions between communities for his own ends.

Christopher Marlowe’s drama documentary The Massacre at Paris was a hit London show in the 1590s which resonates disturbingly today.

Credits

Created by Carl Miller and Jonah Ling
Performed by Ery Nzaramba
Written by Christopher Marlowe and Carl Miller
Directed and produced by Carl Miller
VR developer, 3D modeller and texturer: Jonah Ling
Composer and sound designer: Max Mason
Lighting consultant: Simeon Miller

Developed in part during a research residency at Guildhall School of Music and Drama