ALT A photo of a forest. Overlaid is a screenshot of the Pervasive Media studio website. On it, we see images of studio residents. under "recently joined", Elinor Lower, a 29-year old white non-binary person. Their bio reads: Eli is one of the Studio's 2024 Winter Residency Artists, exploring how we are hyper-individualised as workers, citizens and humans through 'we meet in the woods', a place-based, multiplayer theatrical game.

ALT An image of a forest. Overlaid, a blog post from the Watershed website. Text reads: Following an open call for our Winter Residencies programme we’re excited to introduce our two recipient artists. Responding to the theme of Other Minds their work will harness forest intelligence - the understanding that forest ecosystems, like societies, are maintained by communication and a collective intelligence - and give voice to domestic machines. Watershed’s annual Winter Residencies programme is an opportunity for artists to develop incredible ideas at the Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed’s creative technologies research space. This year we sought work exploring intelligences that are different to human intelligence: animals, machines, or something stranger. We asked questions such as: What does it mean to live in a world filled with different forms of thought?

ALT An image of a forest. overlaid, a continuation of the blog post screenshotted in the previous image. Text reads: Elinor Lower is a Bristol-based writer, theatre-maker and participatory artist interested in how we are hyper-individualised as workers, citizens and humans. Elinor will develop we meet in the woods, a place-based multiplayer theatrical game exploring forest intelligence and the ways in which tactile technology such as vibration or sensors embedded in the landscape can make collaboration irresistible, and remind us of the parts of ourselves we have forgotten. Elinor says: “The idea stems from questions I’ve been needling at, about how we might create spaces for collective imagining/decision-making, weave ourselves back into natural spaces and become more porous to more-than-human intelligences. And crucially: how we might do this through stories, games, in ways that are ridiculous, active, fun. I hope to write some fictions, and bodge some tactile technologies.

ALT Social Skills Training by Solmaz Sharif   Studies suggest How may I help you officer? is the single most disarming thing to say and not What’s the problem? Studies suggest it’s best the help reply My pleasure and not No problem. Studies suggest it’s best not to mention problem in front of power even to say there is none. Gloria Steinem says women lose power as they age and yet the loudest voice in my head is my mother. Studies show the mother we have in mind isn’t the mother that exists. Mine says: What the fuck are you crying for? Studies show the baby monkey will pick the fake monkey with fake fur over the furless wire monkey with milk, without contest. Studies show to negate something is to think it anyway. I’m not sad. I’m not sad. Studies recommend regular expressions of gratitude and internal check-ins. Enough, the wire mother says. [ran out of space. full poem also here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/saeedjones/poem-social-skills-training-by-solmaz-sharif]

ALT a screenshot of a word document with LEAVE THE GAME OPEN typed in it. the document page is black, with white text that looks like a typewriter font.

ALT screenshot showing the listings for the people tagged in the tweet, plus two artworks by the london artist Neko Neko

ALT screenshot showing the listings for the people tagged in the tweet, plus an artwork by the bristol artist Katie Fishlock