Exciting news! I’ve been selected for this year’s Immersive Assembly with York Mediale – “a talent development programme focusing on learning, peer critique and developing new ideas and collaborations in and around immersive art and technology.”

There are six of us in the cohort from across the UK, with a real mix of practices and experience… I’m so excited to start collaborating!

The theme for this year’s Immersive Assembly is ‘Dreams and Echoes’ – meaning I get to explore things like collective consciousness, plural realities and the brain as a mythmaking machine… among other things! (Ancient automata, anyone?)

IA4 asks us to “consider the role that immersive experiences can play in the exploration of what consciousness means now, and what it could mean in the future.” Over the next six months, we’ll be learning about immersive tech, hearing from artists working in this space, and developing new ideas and prototypes. The scheme is also partnered with the University of Oxford, so we’ll have access to world-leading research across neuroscience, mental health, access and medical science, as well as cutting edge AI and ethics research.

As the scheme unfolds, I’ll be sharing some of the outcomes here – so watch this space!

IA4 is supported by the Cultural Programme at The Schwarzman Centre, University of Oxford, the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College Oxford, and Mediale’s talent development focus supported by Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation funding.