Trickbox have had the pleasure of working alongside the production company Proudfoot on several large virtual events this past year. A brilliantly creative company, we have delivered many streamed events for them including several with UBS, an investment and financial services company. One such project was a pilot co-presented between UBS and the Serpentine introducing a series called Artist Worlds focusing on art, sustainability, and technology.

Following Serpentine’s exploration and support of art and advanced technologies, we recently facilitated a virtual art event within a gaming environment, Artists Worlds: Primal Tourism by artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen. Situated on a virtual tropical island, the experience follows the artist and five other contributors as they navigate deserted towns and overgrown forests while engaging with the relationships between nature and technology.

The five participants’ personal camera views, alongside their feeds and two general view drone feeds were sent straight into our remote control room where we overlaid them for the audience view. To ensure the event was as inclusive as possible, we also facilitated both BSL (British Sign Language) and Closed Captions on the feed before streaming into Twitch.

The audience viewed these 14 different shots in a truly immersive journey around the island as academic Alenda Chang, artist Rindon Johnson and writer Mikkel Rosengaard joined Jakob, Kay Watson, Interim Head of Arts Technologies, and Ben Vickers, Senior Strategist at large, at Serpentine, to offer live readings and discussion. Known to many as the ‘digital gardener’ Jakob’s work was highly detailed and the event gave a fascinating insight into the world’s ecology.

For us at Trickbox this was an exciting opportunity, combining gaming technology with a virtual art event. In diversifying the uses of virtual events we find new challenges for our technicians and promote creativity with kit and techniques. From galas to galleries to gaming, we are diversifying fast and we see an exciting future for our virtual events team!