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Heartbeat Gaming Puts a New Spin on 'Jekyll and Hyde'

That and 52 other inventions emerge at 'The Rooms' festival in Bristol.

Image courtesy The Rooms

A three-day arts festival kicks off in Bristol, UK on Friday. Called The Rooms and brought about by REACT,it will feature 53 inventions spread across 17 rooms in an old fire station, magistrates court, and police station in the city center. The inventions are the result of around four years of collaborations between academics, artists, and creative technologists.

They span a whole variety of mediums and disciplines, and the festival will also involve free talks, workshops, film screenings, and parties. Some of the installations include a "breathing" stone that wants to chill you out, a Jekyll and Hyde-based interactive game which uses a person's biodata—heart rate, breath—to advance the narrative, an app that can capture videos on mutiple phones at the same time, digital swing sets, the future of death, magic lanterns, robots, and lots more.

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Here's a couple of highlights:

The Quipu Project

The Quipu Project

is an interactive documentary that takes its name from a knotted-string communication device used in the pre-Columbian Inca Empire. The "living documentary" explores the harrowing story of the forced sterilizations which Peruvian president President Alberto Fujimori undertook in the 1990s which targeted 272,000 indigenous women and 21,000 indigenous men.

It was filmed in the village of Huancabamba in the Peruvian Andes and gives a voice to the indigenous people who were affected and have until now been silenced. Connecting a free telephone line, the filmmakers recorded testimonies from them and wove their tales into a story exploring what took place, in the hope of helping them find justice.

"The aim of The Quipu Project is to shine a light on the sterilisations, creating a collective memory archive of this case hoping that this won't happen again, and these stories are never forgotten," the filmmakers say. "We are working in partnership with Amnesty International to support their Against Your Will campaign, and in collaboration with the local women’s organizations, hoping that this archive will become a useful tool in their fight for recognition and reparation."

The doc makes its premiere at the festival and will be released to the public on December 10.

Theatre Book - Macbeth

Artists

Davy & Kristin McGuire

 have built on their previous creation, the projection-mapped pop-up book

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The Icebook

, to create a new version. Using a micro projector, computer, speakers, and mirroring devices they've created a "battery powered cinematic pop-up book." It includes six paper pages designed like theatrical sets which the action is projected onto.

The tech is integrated into the cover to "create a stand alone storytelling device, mixing the formats of books and theatre stages.The story is driven by the owner of the book who turns the pages and thus triggers video and sound to play out the scenes."

The pop-up book at the festival will play a vignetted version of Shakespeare's Macbeth told through music and moving image.

Protagonist

A collaboration between Katie Day, artistic director of theatre company The Other Way Works, and Dr. John Troyer who works in the field of death studies at Bath University, Protagonist is a software engine which generates a video of your life story using your social media trail.

The idea is that it will compile the vast quantities of personal data we leave online without a second thought into a narrative story that will make more sense than those 4 AM drunken posts.

"Using their own social media content, we want to create a short film memoir of an individual," say the pair. "With the output feeling meaningful, personalised, beautiful, and potentailly provocative."

Find out more about the festival here. It runs from November 5 - 7 at The Rooms, Garden Gates, Silver Street, Bristol, BS1 2AG.

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