Residency at Pervasive Media Studio

Monochrome line drawing of a flying saucer, from a patent document.
Patent drawing of a proposed flying saucer for passengers. By Charles Osmond, 1970.

Right now and through March 2022, I’m artist in residence at Pervasive Media Studio, in the Watershed building in Bristol. I’m researching British Fusion, a performance and VR/AR/XR experience inspired by British Rail’s bizarre patent application for a flying saucer as a means of public transport in the early 1970s. I’m interested in imagining and manifesting (and helping other people to imagine) positive futures; what an amazing future we could have had if flying saucers had come into service, and remained in public ownership…

I’m also really interested in making an augmented reality experience that uses all of our senses and faculties and doesn’t make people like me want to vomit, if we can see it at all. VR headsets, particularly, always feel to me like our senses are being taken away and in most cases replaced with something far inferior.

There will be more here on the site as the project develops.

Two hovering flying saucers in eighties-style British Rail livery of dark teal with yellow and white trim. There are round portholes at the top of the saucers, and underneath they discharge a bright blue energy field. The text says BRITISH FUSION. In the foreground are two laughing people, arm in arm, one wearing a turquoise jumpsuit and the other wearing an orange jumpsuit.
British Fusion poster concept by Alistair Gentry.