The arcade is free, open to everyone, and you can pop in any time you like. Come and say hi!

Come along to one of our arcade days at The Ancient Priors to play fun multiplayer games, team up with your friends, experiment with some alternative controllers, and maybe discover a new game or two from the weirder side of independent developers’ brains.

Delight in striking visuals, colourful imagery, intuitive controls for a slice of Indie game fun.

Run by Jo Summers under the banner of ‘Press Fire to Win’, Pop Up Arcade has been running in various forms since 2014, as part of the Brighton Digital Festival, and alongside the Develop conference in Brighton. Jo also runs events around celebrating women’s work in games, and the Global Game Jam every year.

Expect fun, excitement, cooperation, betrayal, flashing lights, big buttons, beeps and boops, and the opportunity to discover some fun new games you might not have tried yet. We hope to see you there!

Exploring Senses artists are collaborating with youth artists to create artwork, music and lyrics, which will be made into a film by Nathan Clear, providing an alternative viewpoint on young people’s challenges in daily life.

The short film will be projected onto the side of the old Lloyds Bank on Broadway in Crawley.

Thanks to Crawley Community Youth Service and Brighton Youth Centre for their support.

Please Note: Oska Bright Film Festival x Dreamy Place Outdoor Film Trail that takes place at the same time in Crawley on 12th October will include this short film on its one hour trail.

Night Watch is an outdoor film trail taking place on 13th October 2023, with film & video works projected onto buildings around Bewbush, Crawley. Films will be curated from submissions by LGBTQIA+ artists and filmmakers from the UK and internationally.

Follow the film trail as the mobile cinema moves around Bewbush in Crawley, with opportunities to stop and watch, and then follow the trail to the next location. Viewers can follow the trail or just watch one film. videoclub will be walking films through the streets using a portable cinema.

Meet outside Bewbush Centre, Dorsten Square, Crawley RH11 8XW at 7pm to start the tour. Look out for the yellow hi-vis vests.

Access: the trail will cover approximately 1km, all wheelchair accessible. The pace is fairly leisurely. Films will be subtitled.

Delivered in partnership with Creative Crawley.

The event is free to attend and you can just turn up. Spaces are limited though, so to guarantee your place for the film trail on Friday 13th October at 7pm by clicking here

This hybrid artists talk / workshop will respond to your questions – please share your ideas and ambitions or even worries about using technology and Thomas will share their advice and expertise arming you with information on:

• Free software to get started
• Resources
• Techniques and ways to use ‘plug and play’ tech
• Costs behind projects and how to create work

‘An alumni fellow of The Royal Shakespeare Company and currently associate artist at Portsmouth Guildhall, Thomas makes work exploring the potential of XR and emergent technologies in drawing out our humanity. Alongside leading projects that combine sensory practice and new media, Thomas works with marginalized groups, putting their stories at the forefront of this new artform’

Free event – book your free place here

Goliath: Playing with Reality by Anagram
All realities are imagined. It’s the ones we share that endure.

Goliath Playing with Reality is a 25 minute animated VR experience about schizophrenia, gaming and connection, presented here as a virtual reality installation of the expanded game world of Goliath.

Through mind-bending animation, explore the limits of reality and a true story of mental health and the power of gaming. Echo (narrated by Tilda Swinton) guides you through the many realities of Goliath, a man who spent years isolated in psychiatric institutions but finds connection in multiplayer games.

Combining heart-felt dialogue, mesmerising visuals and symbolic interactions, weave through multiple worlds to uncover Goliath’s poignant story.

Antipsychotic by Matt McCorkle
Dive into Antipsychotic and journey through the mind of someone with bipolar disorder. This immersive experience marries poetic reflections and personal narratives with captivating audio-reactive visuals and evocative soundscapes, set to the beat of poignant music. It’s more than just listening; it’s feeling and exploring the nuanced challenges of mental health.

With user-friendly game controls and a tactile haptic system, participants are urged to delve deep, navigating a landscape rich with personal experiences. Utilising cutting-edge XR technologies and spatial audio, Antipsychotic isn’t just a story—it’s a harmonious blend of introspection and raw emotion, offering a profound glimpse into pre and post-treatment sentiments.

[Content Guidance: Contains discussions around mental health issues]

Deep by Owen Harris and Niki Smit
A breath controlled virtual reality experience that invites players to navigate through a serene and poetic underwater world. Movement is controlled by slow, deep diaphragmatic breathing which soothes and relieves anxiety in the player. Since 2016 research partners at the Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab, Radboud University have conducted several studies demonstrating the efficacy of DEEP as an intervention tool for young people with anxiety. The experience is now being applied to a range of conditions including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Long COVID and Functional Neurological Disorders.

Asymmetrically Distributed Hyper Dynamism by Simon Wilkinson, BRiGHTBLACK
BRiGHTBLACK present a video game artwork about ADHD, a science fiction playable podcast built into a retro arcade cabinet, set within a dream, documenting a day on ADHD medication.

As the drug kicks in and the symptoms disappear one by one, the artists explore the comedic juxtaposition between an ADHD brain which finds itself in a world where it can thrive vs one where it is doomed to cause annoyance.

Entry: Free

There will be a panel discussion at 1.45pm – 2.30pm drawing on themes within the Embodied Realities exhibition. Full details here

Bringing in some true creatives and community members to help, eott will be first providing the space to come and communicate, to conversate, and share ideas, whilst secondly hosting an open talk which invites those in attendance to again share ideas, but also to hear others stories, respect others rhythms, and come together to find some peace and normality in talking about our minds.

Much like in the tone of its online work, eott will be delivering (and encouraging people to partake) the session in an informal manner.

The afternoon will also feature screenings by Lighthouse Young Creatives (LYC) – a professional and personal development scheme empowering young people who aspire to work in the creative industries but face a variety of barriers to doing so. LYC also sets out to address the chronic lack of diversity within the creative and digital industries, which stems from ongoing social inequalities and a historical lack of access and inclusion.

The event is free to attend and you can just turn up.

Instructions to play: Rakete is free to play. Players can choose from any of the 38 levels to begin playing. For brand new players, it is recommended to play the first level first. The first level is a great introduction to the game and allows players to have an idea of how the game works. It is also a great level for all players to figure out how to maneuver the ship together and to get the hang of moving a rocket ship with only a finger.

Please Note: There will be someone from the Dreamy Place Team to help you!

• TR333 by April Lin 林森, 2021, 10 mins
• Where’s My Stick? by Clifford Sage, 2019, 4:20 mins
• Icarus by Jessy Jetpacks, 2020, 3:57 mins
• The Air in Cyberspace by Megan Watson, 2022, 3:20 mins
• Queer Theory Saved My Life by P1nk Poodle, 2023, 4:23 mins

This event is free to attend, and is being shown throughout the duration of our Pop Up Arcade exhibition.

Don’t miss out on this captivating journey into the world of videogame-inspired films!

Film details and Artist Bios

TR333, April Lin 林森, 2021, 10 mins
In collaboration with ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, artist-filmmaker April Lin 林森 presents ‘TR333’, a speculative documentary which imagines a new species of tree based on scientific literature on plants and climate hardiness. Their hybrid forms and body parts a patchwork amalgamation of different tree types, this tree is a climate adaptative response, a lifeform born out of resilience and hope. As the spirit inhabiting the tree emerges to converse with the viewer, they share with us their experiences of ecocidal generational trauma, urging us to reflect around the ways all the beings on the planet are deeply interlinked, and to honour our collective responsibility towards one another. Using a blend of 3D animation, found footage, and a musical score based on data sonification, ‘TR333’ uses the speculative to recast the ecological crisis, asking ‘Why is this important?’ from a multispecies and affective gaze.

Commissioned by Sheffield DocFest and supported by Wellcome.

April Lin 林森 (b. 1996, Stockholm — they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator investigating image-making and world-building as sites for the construction, sustenance, and dissemination of co-existent yet conflicting truths. Working across moving image, performance, creative computing and installation, they dream & explore & critique & fret & catastrophise & imagine & play — for a collective remembering of forgotten pasts, for a critical examination of normalised presents, and for a visualising of freer futures as, of course, imagined from the periphery.

Interweaving strands of auto-biography, documentary, queer ecology, and new media, April Lin 林森’s works are topped off with an inevitable garnish consisting of the other matters dialoguing with their brain and heart during the making process of each piece. Uniting their genre-fluid body of work is a commitment to centring oppressed knowledges, building an ethics of collaboration around reciprocal care, and exploring the linkages between history, memory, and interpersonal and structural trauma.

Their work has been shown at the Museum of the Moving Image New York, Sheffield DocFest, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, the V&A Museum, HOME, Malmö Konstmuseum, LA Filmforum, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Manchester Art Gallery, MADATAC, Arebyte Gallery, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, NOWNESS Asia, and 4:3 Boiler Room.

Where’s My Stick? Clifford Sage, 2019, 4:20 mins
When we see ProDance® in the Where’s My Stick video, we see him at a transmission system, an intergalactic signal post on a telecommunication exchange planet. He dials into planet Earth’s web, accessing their protocols and sends an upload request to Quantum Natives Records.

The recsund ProDance® is an Audio Visual Project combining many functionalities into one, it has been the visual basis of the Quantum Natives release Intellectual Reject series and acts as a moving image medium across live visuals, game play mechanics, story telling and Virtual Reality ventures.

Initially a light-hearted experiment, the ProDance® has grown respect in the art and music community, being show live at the ICA 2017 and at Drawing Room gallery London 2016 but also UK comedy network with Adult Swim UK re-releasing the Where’s My Stick Video.

The Project continues as part of recsund Quantum Natives releases and is currently building up to be a 3rd person adventure game, ‘ProDance® Music Academy’ where we get to explore the ProDance®’s exiled world and learn how to make music with him and to hopefully return to Earth.

Clifford Sage (Recsund) is a CGI artist, musician and UCL lecturer of 3D design from Somerset, England. Often working with virtual world-building and digital animation, Sage explores audio interaction and non-linear storytelling through game engine mechanics. Since graduating in Visual Communications from the Royal College of Art in 2010, Sage was a co-founder of Werkflow.ltd games studio. He has performed audiovisual sets at festivals including Rewire, L.E.V. and Atonal, collaborating with artists including Lee Gamble, Keiken and Lawrence Lek. Sammy Lee and Yuri Pattison. Recently he worked on Resident Advisor’s Club Quarantäne Series as part of the Off World.live. He has been making music under the recsund alias since 2001 and has released on Quantum Natives and Alien Jams.

Recent Personal projects include recsund – Tuner, exhibiting/performing at Somerset House Studios, London (2018) and Club Adriatico, Ravenna, IT (2018), LEV Festival, ES (2019). Vitalcapacities (2020) and ReWire Festival, NL (2021),Xolo, Space Generators(2021),London

Icarus, Jessy Jetpacks, 2020, 3:57 mins
Icarus is the second track from a six-track concept album called ‘Day of the Challenger’. Originally composed and shown as part of an immersive synchronised audiovisual and virtual reality installation, this circular film was projected into a circular shadow. An eclipse. The album loops at sunrise, the passage of the sun over a barren desert is a motif echoed in the virtual reality space.

Within the virtual reality of the original installation, the viewer is granted a growing flesh body that disintegrates into a stellar nursery. In this video, the singing character appears as three avatars traversing a barren desert, made partly of flesh. At one point a fourth wall is introduced and broken as the artist scribbles clumsily on the screen.

The visual signifiers tell a story of transcending the self and depersonalising the narrative, but the song lyrics speak of the price of ambition. The original story of Icarus is that he escaped his city prison on homemade wings. Then in his joy, he perished by flying too high as the wax holding the wings melted under an unforgiving sun. These days you don’t even need to fly to get burned.

Jessy Jetpacks is a London based multi-disciplinary artist. Her mediums include painting, sculpture, film, music, audio/video installations, and performance. Themes and interests range from the global political to the fundamental and private human condition – where advocacy, poetry, and philosophy become bedfellows.

The Air in Cyberspace, Megan Watson, 2022, 3:20 mins
The Air in Cyberspace is a Sci-Fi animation depicting cyberspace as a parallel universe. A datascape of information seeping from the physical world to a geographical, abstract ocean of electric bioluminescence. Inspired by cyberculture theories, The Air in Cyberspace depicts the start of self-organising cyborg existence.

Megan Eekie Watson is a visual artist from Teesside, currently based in Glasgow. Her work is deeply influenced by Queer Ecology and Cyberculture theories such as posthumanism, cyborg ontology, and glitch feminism. Through sci-fi themes, she seeks to challenge anthropocentrism and celebrate the commonalities that unite an ecology.

Queer Theory Saved My Life, P1nk Poodle, 2023, 4:23 mins
Queer Theory Saved My Life explores queerness in AI image models alongside NASA public domain footage. Typically text-to-image AI image generation is done with visually descriptive keywords, but by inputting excerpts from queer theorists unexpected representations are created. Various cycles of feedback into the image generators, alongside other processing are used in a science fiction narrative of escape to Mars.

P1nk Poodle is a non-binary artist and filmmaker, at once new-born as of 2020 and at the same time bringing over a decade’s experience in the film industry from a past existence. They work at the intersection of fiction and documentary/non-fiction, creating hybrid forms in mixed media, using moving image, digital art and 2D/3D animation.
As a queer, neurodivergent artist they foreground inclusive and collaborative approaches to creating work. Recent screenings include: videoclub / Videotage’s Both Sides Now, Fringe!, and Scottish Queer International Film Festival. In a filmmaker alter ego they’ve worked with Tate Modern, MoMA, Science Museum, and IWM Holocaust Galleries among others.