Our associate artists work closely with the studio and support us in achieving our artistic vision through collaboration and long-standing partnerships. All artists have worked with the studio team to create immersive and digital projects for their established practices. Acting as ambassadors for the VIP Studio, our associate artists share the curiosity, passion and values of our team and actively engage in the arts industry both locally, nationally and internationally.
Andrea Jaeger
Interested in unlocking immersive experiences of photographic practices that push beyond photographies visual domain.
Find Andrea online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Immersive technologies unlocking immersive experiences of photographic practices that push beyond photographies visual domain.
Bio: Andrea Jaeger is a German-British photographic artist living in Nottingham and Berlin. Jaeger’s practice exposes the flesh of photographic bodies, their sounds, their tactile and sensuous dimensions. Underpinned by practice research, she explores more-than-human agencies and more-than-visual senses in the making of photographic practice of real-world production sites such as photographic laboratories and manufacturing plants. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally with group and solo shows in the UK, US, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark.
Ben Neal (Psicon Lab/Displace Studio)
Excited by the potential to illicit a deeper understanding, connection and empathy with a subject and/or subject matter.
Find Ben online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology?
"I work with technology to produce Immersive Art and frequently work with interactive installations, digital performance, Volumetric Capture, Motion Capture, skeletal and facial tracking, Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. I use and built a wide range of software and hardware on projects to realise creative concepts, explore research possibilities, and develop unique and innovative experiences."
Psicon Lab
Ben works freelance as an Arts-focussed Creative Technologist under the name Psicon Lab. He is a digital artist, programmer, games/gadget builder and educator. His work often uses audio-visual and digital technology to create interactive art, bespoke electronic devices, musical instruments and immersive content such as Virtual / Augmented Reality.
He's worked with a lot of arts, music and cultural organisations including Victoria and Albert Museum, Somerset House, Ikon Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, MAC, Eastside Projects and the British Council and as well as festivals such as Sonár (ES), Supersonic, Fierce, Random String, Flatpack, Now Play This and London Design Festival.
Previous projects include work for artist Rachel Maclean, Hervisions, Dazed, Open Data Institute, Coventry City of Culture, Motionhouse, Swoomptheeng, Outside Studios, BOM and Juneau Projects; and several projects for Birmingham City University, Loughborough University and online educational content for Oxford University Press.
Ben gives talks, presentations, workshops, consultancy and mentoring for clients such as Abandon Normal Devices, STEAMhouse and Animate Projects; Universities such as Birmingham, Coventry, De Montfort, Greenwich and Nottingham; many appearances at BCU's Maker Monday events, and several appearances on BBC radio and TV. He often speaks about creative and emerging technologies, and his work.
Displace Studio
As one of the co-founders of Displace Studio (alongside digital dance artist Kerryn Wise) Ben has toured immersive artworks internationally. The best known of which is Facades - a 15 minute Immersive Virtual Reality dance theatre experience.
This surreal ‘VR noir’ presents hauntingly beautiful choreography from unique perspectives, inviting the viewer to look behind the scenes, move beyond the veneer and take a closer look.
Exploring the intersection of dance, film, physical theatre and digital technology, Displace produce bold, boundary-pushing work that dances between the darkness and the light - reality and fantasy - creating deep, interpersonal, immersive experiences that encourage audiences to step into, behind, and around the edges of illusion. Works often take the form of intimate, dreamlike journeys through uncertain places rich in symbolism and metaphor in which curious behaviours are encountered.
Previous exhibitions, talks and workshops have taken place at Studio Wayne McGregor, Pervasive Media Studio, Lakeside, Nottingham Contemporary, Phoenix and at festival such as Aesthetica Festival, Encounters Festival, Extended Senses, QLDXR Festival (AUS), Moving Body Festival (BG), Dance Camera Istanbul (TR), Speaking Volumes (CA) and FIVARS (US/CA).
Blanche Pictures / Esther Johnson
Excited by the possibilities of immersive technology to site an audience member within a world in a powerful experiential capacity, and the potential to illicit a deeper understanding, connection and empathy with a subject and/or subject matter.
Find Esther online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: For my work I create portraits that focus on alternative social, marginal, and micro-histories, to reveal resonant stories that may otherwise remain hidden or ignored. As work is focused on ‘lived experienced’ I am excited by the possibilities of Immersive technology to site an audience member within a world in a powerful experiential capacity, and the potential to illicit a deeper understanding, connection and empathy with a subject and/or subject matter. The non-linear potential of immersive tech, by which the viewer/experience can navigate their own journey through a work, is also something I’d like to explore further, handing audience members more control and independence in their encounters with artistic works.
Bio: Esther Johnson (MA Royal College of Art) is an artist and filmmaker working at the intersection of artist moving image and documentary. She is former recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Research Prize for Performing and Visual Arts, and is Professor of Film and Media Arts in the Art, Design and Media Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University.
Esther’s poetic portraits focus on alternative social, marginal, and micro-histories, to reveal resonant stories that may otherwise remain hidden or ignored. Recurring themes include social narratives, personal histories, notions of testament and memory, heritage, folklore, regeneration, and exploration of architectural vernaculars and the inhabited environment.
Her film works include: feature documentaries DUST & METAL (2022); ASUNDER (2016); and short films and installations Liberation Radio (2021); a ROLE to PLAY (2019); Abstractions of Holderness (2017); Alone Together: the Social Life of Benches (2015); Chalk Trace (2013); The View From My Window (2013), and Analogue Kingdom (2010). Recent photography was published by the modernist in Esther’s photo book The Beacons of Hull.
Work has exhibited in galleries, film festivals, and special events in 40+ countries, including at BFI London Film Festival; CPH:Dox, Copenhagen; Hull 2017; ICA, London; Landscape Institute, London; NASA, California; International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam; Istanbul Biennial; Venice Biennale; Sheffield Doc/Fest; True/False, Missouri; Walsall New Art Gallery; and Tate galleries. Films have broadcast on BBC and Channel 4, and audio works aired on ABC Australia, BBC Radio 4, Resonance FM and RTÉ radio.
CAD for Fashion
Interested in bridging the gap between traditional and digital techniques in fashion and textiles, propelling the industry to more sustainable but also more creative practices.
Find CAD for Fashion online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Immersive Technology holds the key to bridging the gap between traditional and digital techniques in Fashion and textiles, propelling the industry to more sustainable but also more creative practices.
Bio: At CAD for Fashion we are passionate about embracing technology and innovation to create sustainable change in the Fashion and Textile industry. We have made it our mission to inspire confidence and empower people to explore and enjoy being creative digitally without the fear and overwhelm that new technology can bring.
Caron-Jane Lyon
Interested in crafting multi-dimensional worlds where anyone can embody new perspectives offers a pathway to greater human connection and social change.
Find Caron-Jane Lyon online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: I am interested in immersive technology like VR and AR for its potential to create empathy and understanding, transcending divides. Crafting multi-dimensional worlds where anyone can embody new perspectives offers a pathway to greater human connection and social change.
Bio:As an artist and creative producer, I am compelled to push the boundaries of storytelling by fusing physical and virtual worlds. My mission is to harness emerging technologies to craft multi-dimensional immersive experiences that provoke new dialogues and engage audiences in innovative ways, especially examining the impact of technology on how we see the world and separate fact from fraud, real from fake.
I believe XR and interactive media enable us to transcend the limitations of traditional mediums and theatrical conventions. My collaborations with storytellers, VR designers, developers and theatre creators are opening portals to imaginative new narrative spaces off the stage, beyond the screen and out of this world.
I am committed to accessibility and representation within experimental works, considering how these technologies can enhance inclusion and provide access. My goal is to produce bold, thought-provoking multi-sensory experiences while retaining compassion and provoking critical faculty.
Chronic Insanity / Joe Strickland
Interested in that live feeling being replicated at home, allowing those traditionally in person experiences to be much more accessible.
Find Joe online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Joe specialises in using traditional theatre making techniques and applying them to entertainment technology, such as virtual and augmented reality, as well as recreating physical presence using these technologies. Joe loves immersive technology because it allows for that live feeling to be replicated at home, allowing those traditionally in person experiences to be much more accessible"
Bio: Joe Strickland is an award winning theatre maker, digital producer, creative technologist and access consultant with great energy and passion. Since 2012 they have been helping to create all manner of theatre and performance in venues across the country. They are the Artistic Director of Chronic Insanity and have a PhD in Future Experience Technologies from the University of Nottingham. They are an experienced digital culture and accessibility consultant, having spoken about the subjects internationally and worked with a large range of organisations, including the Young Vic, BBC R&D, British Council, 20 Stories High, and Eventotron.
Emma Wass
Interested in the ways immersive technology can access, and interact with, new and inspiring worlds in a multi-sensory engagement.
Find Emma online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Immersive technology allows us to access, and interact with, new and inspiring worlds in a multi-sensory engagement. As a creator it offers powerful ways to entertain, encourage empathy, and promote health and wellbeing.
To be a creator of such worlds, or an explorer of them, can challenge us and be a massive amount of fun.
Bio: Emma is a creator of MBW Connect, a prototype in which the arts, science, technology and health intersect. This is a space Emma especially enjoys working in due to the exciting interdisciplinary collaborations it generates, and potential impact it can bring to people’s lives.
Emma has an MA in Film from the Royal College of Art, and a first-class BA Hons in Fine Art. Over the past 25 years she has worked in film and tv, making films and helping others to tell their stories through film and other media. For the past 8 years, Emma has been working as an arts practitioner to support cognitive health. Emma had the privilege to work with a wide range of people including those with lived experience of dementia. It is these people who inspired MBW Connect.
In 2022 thanks to an Arts Council grant, Emma benefited from the fantastic opportunity to be part of the Leadd:ng programme. Here Emma learnt from, and created with, the Mixed Reality Lab at the university. This led to the development of MBW Connect which uses hand/body tracking to incentivise cognitive and physical activity along with social interaction. It enables a user to conduct their own immersive orchestra of audio-visual effects on screen. While doing so they get a Mind Body Workout.
Jamie Rutherford
Interested in making connections with audiences more powerful and more inclusive in the future.
Find Jamie online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: I love how exploring immersive technologies has enabled me to think differently about my practice and question how music performance can be altered and enhanced. It has given me lots of sparks of creativity and I'm excited to see what it can do to make connections with audiences more powerful and more inclusive in the future!
Bio: Jamie is a guitarist, composer and singer-songwriter based in the UK.
Jamie has released 3 albums of original music to great critical acclaim with acoustic trio Threaded. He has also released 4 solo guitar EPs, Rosette, Vol. 1, Dedications, Reminiscence and Journey Within.
As a result of working with the music library Artlist, Jamie's music has been used on TV shows around the world. He has also composed and recorded exclusive tracks for the French music publisher, Cezame Music Agency.
Jamie trained as a classical guitarist at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and since graduating, has specialised in acoustic and fingerstyle guitar.
He has performed at many prestigious venues and festivals across the UK, such as the Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre and Wilderness festival. With Threaded, he composed the scores for Red Earth Theatre's shows 'Soonchild', 'The Red Tree' and 'Make Do and Mend' and has toured the UK with them as an actor-musician.
Jamie has been a Musician in Residence in The University of Notthingham's Mixed Reality Lab, doing exciting research and work on immersive and inclusive performance technologies.
Jamie also works as a Musician in Residence for the arts-based charity Air Arts in the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton.
Jamie also performs in the acoustic duo Apple Skins and function groups House of Harmony and Acoustic Tapestry.
Jamie is a Fishman artist.
He is obsessed with coffee and enjoys drawing and painting.
Katie Sandoval
Wants to connect with audiences in unique, dynamic and exciting ways.
Find Katie online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Immersive technology allows artists to explore ideas more deeply and connect with audiences in unique, dynamic and exciting ways.
Bio: Katie is an artist and educator based at Backlit Studios in Nottingham. She’s interested in the relationships between people and their environments and explores these through painting, photography and printmaking. Born in Mexico City, Katie moved the UK as a child and went on to study Textile Design at Loughborough College of Art & Design and Design and Design: Strategy & Innovation at Brunel University. She qualified as an art teacher at The University of Cambridge in 2008. Katie enjoys inspiring others to be creative through her art workshops, on-line mentoring, content creation and bespoke creative events. Her recent project titled: ’Remote Landscapes’, gathers landscape imagery from friends around the world. Katie's is interested in the ways in which technology is transforming art and image making experiences.
Kerryn Wise / Displace Studio
Interested in the ways that immersive technologies, coupled with dance performance, can create innovative experiences for audiences that reshape their spatial and perceptual senses.
Find Kerryn online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: I have always been fascinated by the intersections between technology and the performing body and notions of digital intimacy. My practice explores the relationships between the virtual and physical and I am interested in the ways that immersive technologies, coupled with dance performance, can create innovative experiences for audiences that reshape their spatial and perceptual senses.
Bio: Kerryn Wise is a dance artist, performer, and researcher based in the UK, exploring the intersection of dance, film, physical theatre, and digital technologies. She is currently in the latter stages of a practice-based PhD exploring the use of virtual reality technologies within performance practices, funded by Midlands4Cities/AHRC. She is interested in interrogating the audience/spectator relationship to understand how virtual environments can affect audience perception. Kerryn’s current work explores live performance, VR and volumetric capture. Kerryn is a QuestLab Digital Dance Artist alumni at Studio Wayne McGregor and is a NearNow, studio member at Broadway Media Centre’s studio for arts and technology. Kerryn has been devising and choreographing work for over 20 years and has shown her work at a range of festivals, theatres and venues nationally and internationally including the National Review of Live Art, Sensitive Skin Festival, NEAT, NottDance, Performing Futures, Studio Wayne McGregor, Prague Quadrennial, FIVARS, QLD XR Festival, amongst others. Kerryn is a P-T Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Kerryn is one half of Displace Studio, a Mixed Reality Performance Studio with collaborator Creative Technologist Ben Neal. Producing bold, boundary-pushing work that dances between the darkness and the light, reality and fantasy, Displace create deep, interpersonal, immersive experiences that encourage audiences to step into, behind, and around the edges of illusion.
MishMash Productions
Exploring the opportunities to improve access by reducing costs and increasing relevance and inclusion.
Find MishMash online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Access to live classical music can be restricted by geographic, economic and cultural (it's not for us') factors. Immersive technologies offer opportunities to improve access by reducing costs and increasing relevance and inclusion.
Bio: MishMash Productions’ vision is to transform perceptions of what classical music could and should be, particularly for young (0-16), schools and family audiences. We believe in pushing boundaries and dismantling outdated traditions, creating a 21st century classical music offer that is exciting, engaging and relevant to the present. In addition to making and touring new work we create progressive, paid training pathways supporting musicians more representative of our audiences; support sector development through co- productions, training programmes, and facilitating both a producers’ forum and touring network; and advocate for meaningful research, evaluation and consultation, sharing best practice across the sector.
Rosie Rutherford
Looking for new ways to connect with the audience and communicate musically.
Find Rosie online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: The use of immersive technology is so exciting, as it gives us so many new ways to connect with the audience and communicate musically.
Bio: Rosie is a freelance musician and composer based in the Midlands.
After graduation from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with a First Class Honours degree and a PGCert from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Rosie has embarked on an exciting and eclectic music career!
Rosie is one third of Threaded, a folk-fusion acoustic trio that perform original material that have released 3 albums to great critical acclaim and tour the acoustic and festival circuits. She is also a founding member of contemporary classical trio The Willow Ensemble.
Recent work has seen her work as a musician and composer for theatre company Red Earth Theatre, and as a Musician in Residence for The University of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab, exploring accessible technologies for music performance and is thrilled to have recently gained status as an associate Artist for their VIP studio.
Rosie works as a Musician in Healthcare for a number of hospital trusts, which is a job she feels very privileged to do, and loves being able to bring music to community settings, and is also the Music Coordinator for Air Arts at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton!
Outside of musical life, Rosie drinks a lot of tea, eats a lot of cheese and is a mum to 3 beautiful children.
Lytisha Tunbridge
Exploring the possibilities for the arts, for health, and for wellbeing, using immersive technologies.
Find Lytisha online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: As an artist living with MS, I see limitless possibilities for the arts, for health, and for wellbeing, using immersive technologies. Physical barriers to access can be significantly reduced, widening opportunities for all.
Bio: Lytisha Tunbridge (she/ her) is a Nottingham, UK, based performer and writer with poetry collections available online, through independent bookstores or direct from Poetry Aloud presents. She lives with MS and is interested in making poetry more accessible.
Since October 2022 Lytisha has been working, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality Lab, on A Journey Inside VR Poetry Experience. This is a poem, which is experienced using a VR headset, taking you on a journey through the imagination of the poet as she is inside an MRI machine. You see how the MRI sounds lead her imagination and memories using a playful mixture of animation and realism.
From 2024 A Journey Inside will be toured across the UK as well as available as a download for your VR headset.
Previous performances of A Journey Inside poem have included working with a contemporary orchestra where the audience is blindfolded and the sounds surround. This VR iteration moves from there to including the visuals and experiencing the poem in a different, solo, environment.
Lytisha’s poetry can also be experienced in more traditional environments such as at spoken word events and through books. Upcoming events are available from her website.
Threaded
Exploring the potentials of immersive technology within music performance.
Find Threaded online
Why you’re interested in immersive technology: Being able to explore the potentials of immersive technology within music performance has been so inspiring, and has given us the chance to play with so many musical ideas, whilst also improving our accessibility as performers.
Bio: Threaded are a folk- fusion acoustic trio that create and perform original instrumentals and self-penned songs, inspired by world folk culture, nature, stories and personal experience.
Threaded is the 'impressive talent' (Folk Radio UK), of Jamie Rutherford (guitar/lead vocals), Ning- ning Li (violin/vocals) and Rosie Rutherford (clarinet/vocals). They have released 3 studio albums to great critical acclaim, have toured the UK extensively and are currently working on new material towards a fourth album!
Threaded have also branched out into theatre work, and over the last few years, working with D/deaf accessible theatre company Red Earth Theatre, as composers and performers. This kickstarted their exploration of accessibility in music, and how they could make their music more accessible for everyone. Since this they received ACE funding for an R&D project during lockdown, which looked at composition and accessibility, and they have been lucky enough to work with incredible BSL sign song performers Rebecca Withey and Caroline Parker MBE. They have also been working with Nottingham University's Mixed Reality Lab and more recently the VIP studio into developing tech to support future performances and are over the moon to be Associate Artists with them, so watch this space!
They are to be greatly applauded for the entirely self-penned compositions that they have come up with, and for the most impressive breadth of style they demonstrate.
R2 Rock 'n' Reel
With their own impressive talent to underpin their passion for musical exploration, [and] seemingly endless capacity to create music and song that appeals across multiple audiences
Folk Radio UK
