THEATRE JUKEBOX
Interactive platform for storytelling

Theatre Jukebox is an arcade-style cabinet that tells stories in a unique way. Take a seat, slip on some headphones, and watch as each photograph comes to life.
You are invited to choose from a selection of cards. Each one plays a short, self-contained snapshot, but if you continue, connections between the cards build a bigger picture.
The audio stories are brought to life through projections mapped to the images. The resulting experience is fragmented, non-linear and pieced together by you. It is like snippets of memory or flicking through a photo album, each picture sparking images, associations, snatches of conversations and ideas.
Theatre Jukebox is a platform for telling stories. It particularly challenges the way we interact with archives and is a new way to attach digital stories and real value to ‘physical things’. It can be installed and repurposed in different contexts, but in every case provides an intimate experience through the artistic conception of linking the stories together.
“It is like snippets of memory or flicking through a photo album, each picture sparking images, associations, snatches of conversations and ideas.”
We developed this project through a residency at the Pervasive Media Studio in June 2011. Since then, we have worked with a range of partners to create bespoke curations. These include The Royal Shakespeare Company, Oxford Museum, Mass Observation and Battersea Arts Centre. We have also run workshops where participants make their own cards based on personal memories. And in March 2013, Theatre Jukebox was nominated for an arts award at SxSW Interactive, Austin.
Theatre Jukebox Projects
Clients
Developed through a residency at Pervasive Media studio. Commissions by: Science and Industry Museum Manchester, Mass Observation Archive, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Croydon Council, Watershed, Oxford Museum, BBC Radio Bristol, Birmingham Library, Tewkesbury Hospital.
Dates
June 2011
Collaborators
Jo Lathwood - fabricator
Dan Williams - creative technician
Awards
Nominated for an Interactive Arts Award at SxSW Interactive, 2013
Latest Projects
Interactive projection wall for Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery, at The National Railway Museum
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Explore the Barbican Centre archive through oral histories and projected animations
Touring Sound Booth presenting a collection of women’s contemporary stories of activism
Interactive table that plays a selection of stories relating to the Partition of India