CiRCA69

Brief description

Evolving digital creatures respond to human presence and behaviour, reproducing with inherited traits and mutations so initially identical lifeforms diverge over time.

Full description

Digital Lifeforms is a 2026 work in progress by Simon Wilkinson. The project begins with digital creatures born as ovoid 'eggs' which evolve physically and behaviourally according to what they sense through a webcam, including human presence, numbers of people and social signals. The lifeforms are deliberately non-humanoid and communicate through generative growth, movement and colour.

The system includes inherited genetic traits, mutation events and generational reproduction, allowing initially identical creatures to diverge over time. Behaviour can change depending on whether a creature is watched, approached, ignored or left alone. The work is being developed in Unity using C# and computer-vision inputs, with gallery installation scenarios exploring how the lifeforms socialise differently when exposed to wider groups of people.

Brief description

Thirteen is a recreation of a BBC BASIC program created as an early artwork by Simon Wilkinson when he was thirteen.

Full description

Thirteen is a BBC Micro emulator-based app that twice a day uploads a variant of a program artist Simon Wilkinson created to annoy his computer science teacher at school when he was thirteen years old. The app creates a variant of the original program and uploads a screen recording of it operating to a YouTube channel twice each day.

Brief description

A generative artwork rendering real memories as unstable probability clouds that repeatedly reform and decay according to the age of the remembered event.

Full description

Photographing Memories is a 2026 artwork by Simon Wilkinson, released as circa69. It renders real memories as unstable probability clouds, generating a new version every few seconds rather than fixing a memory into a single image. The degree of visual decay is linked to the year in which the memory was formed, treating recollection as probabilistic, unstable and subject to erosion over time. The work was developed as part of the ongoing Electric Dreaming residency programme with Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and Jesus College.

Brief description

A film written and directed by Simon Wilkinson, completed in March 2026 and produced through BRiGHTBLACK Films.

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An Unsent Letter of Apology from 1993 was written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and completed in March 2026, produced through BRiGHTBLACK Films. The film subsequently entered an international festival run, including a screening at Bondi Film Festival in October 2026.

Brief description

A large-scale participatory artwork enabling audiences to collectively shape a shared digital game environment in real time using game technologies and AI.

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Those Who Hold Up the Sky was a large-scale BRiGHTBLACK commission for Factory International in Manchester in 2025. Designed for Factory International’s large warehouse space, the immersive and playable work used real-time game technologies and artificial intelligence to enable large audiences to collectively co-create and alter a shared digital video-game environment in real time. The work was created in collaboration with local residents group Fusion Factory.

Brief description

An automated social media intervention that fact-checked public statements on X and posted corrective replies directly beneath them.

Full description

GPT_Replies was an automated social media intervention created by Simon Wilkinson in February 2025. Written in Python, the work operated on X by identifying statements made by journalists and other public accounts that appeared to require verification, fact-checking those claims and publishing a reply directly beneath the original post.

The project explored the increasingly blurred boundary between artistic intervention, automated moderation and the emerging role of artificial intelligence as an active participant in public discourse. Rather than presenting fact-checking as a separate editorial process, GPT_Replies inserted verification directly into the conversational architecture of the platform, placing an automated corrective voice alongside the human accounts producing and circulating information.

The work lasted for less than two months. By the end of March 2025, X had introduced fact-checking functionality through Grok that closely resembled the central behaviour of GPT_Replies: users could invoke an AI system within conversations to interrogate and verify claims made in posts. The platform had effectively absorbed the artwork's core proposition into its own infrastructure. GPT_Replies consequently ended, with its rapid technological redundancy becoming part of the work itself.

Brief description

Commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices, a performance lecture speculatively exploring the future of human beings in an AGI world.

Full description

Commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices, a performance lecture speculatively exploring the future of human beings in an AGI world.

Brief description

VR Synthesizer experience.

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VR Synthesizer experience which turns the movement of the left hand into the notes and timbre of the synth and the movement of the right hand operates audio effects.

Brief description

A 2025 BRiGHTBLACK single created collaboratively by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah and released through BRiGHTBLACK Music.

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Vampire Clan was a single released in 2025 by BRiGHTBLACK, a collaboration between Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah, on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label.

Brief description

A two-track circa69 release drawing on the music and world of the Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping project.

Full description

Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping EP was a two-track release issued in 2025 by circa69 through BRiGHTBLACK Music, connected to the earlier transmedia artwork Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping.

Brief description

A four-track circa69 EP released through BRiGHTBLACK Music, connected to the A Thousand Conversations About Death project.

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1000 Conversations About Death was a four-track EP released in 2025 by circa69 on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label, extending the musical material associated with the A Thousand Conversations About Death artwork.

Brief description

A 2025 single released by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA through BRiGHTBLACK Music.

Full description

Dead Man was a single released in 2025 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA, on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label.

Brief description

A 2025 single released by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA through BRiGHTBLACK Music.

Full description

Haint was a single released in 2025 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA, on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label.

Brief description

An interactive AI installation created with Jake Parker, allowing visitors to encounter a conversational digital representation built through collaboration with the artist.

Full description

Jake AI was a 2025 collaborative AI installation by Jake Parker and Simon Wilkinson, released under circa69. Visitors interacted with an AI-mediated conversational representation developed through the collaboration.

Brief description

An AI-assisted performance examining 80 years of economic data and lived experience to explore why Baby Boomers and Gen Z face radically different financial realities.

Full description

From Boomer to Bust was commissioned by ARC in Stockton-on-Tees. The work used artificial intelligence to examine approximately eighty years of economic data, searching for patterns that could help explain the divergence between the lived economic experiences of Baby Boomers and Generation Z.

The resulting performance combined live ambient electronic music with visuals from a metaverse environment and recorded interviews with people of different ages in Stockton-on-Tees whose economic lives differed sharply. Its narrative traced the UK’s movement from a post-war European economic orthodoxy toward a new American economic orthodoxy in the late 1970s and 1980s, examining how those changes affected the lived financial realities of people from lower-income and working-class backgrounds.

Brief description

A 2023 single by BRiGHTBLACK, created collaboratively by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah and released through BRiGHTBLACK Music.

Full description

Flag W#NKER was a single released in 2023 by BRiGHTBLACK, a collaboration between Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah, on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label.

Brief description

A self-titled five-track cassette released under the BRiGHTBLACK band name on BRiGHTBLACK Music.

Full description

BRiGHTBLACK was a self-titled five-track cassette released in 2023 under the BRiGHTBLACK band name on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label.

Brief description

A participatory live video-game and audiovisual artwork in which audiences collectively shaped an unfolding playable world in real time.

Full description

A Carnival Between Worlds was a 2023 BRiGHTBLACK project by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah. The participatory live video-game and audiovisual work was co-created with large numbers of audience members, using playable and immersive storytelling to allow participants to influence a shared unfolding world. The project was funded by Arts Council England and premiered at The Old Market in Brighton.

Brief description

An album released by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA through BRiGHTBLACK Music.

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Fathers was an album released in 2022 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA, on the BRiGHTBLACK Music label. This is the 7th home studio album under the name CHARLA.

Brief description

A two-part playable work gathering audience testimony about death and grief, then transforming those recordings into a live electronic music and metaverse AV performance.

Full description

A Thousand Conversations About Death was commissioned by Hospice UK through Dying Matters and created by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah as BRiGHTBLACK. The work had two connected parts. In the first, an individual audience member entered an immersive metaverse world either on a flat-screen computer or in VR. There they met two characters played live by Wilkinson and Appannah and became involved in a story that invited them to share experiences of death, grief and dying as advice to two animals confronting death in a beautiful fantasy world.

Audience interactions were recorded as audio. At the end of a run, selected poignant contributions were edited into a live ambient and minimal-techno audiovisual performance. Myra Appannah performed the visual material live from the metaverse world while Simon Wilkinson performed the electronic score using analogue synthesisers and other electronic instruments. The work was presented at Death Fest at the Attenborough Centre, University of Sussex, and at a now-closed church venue in east Brighton.

Brief description

Participants contributed dreams during a workshop, creating a shared virtual archive later experienced in VR during a live quadraphonic musical performance.

Full description

The Dream Archive was a process-based participatory artwork created by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah as BRiGHTBLACK. Participants spent a day contributing elements of their dreams through a workshop process, which was used to construct a bespoke shared virtual-production archive combining the dreams of the group.

The process culminated in a live quadraphonic VR performance. Individual audience members entered the dream archive in virtual reality while Myra Appannah and Simon Wilkinson performed a live score in quadraphonic sound. The work premiered at the University of Brighton.

Brief description

A VR experience for Oculus Rift exhibited at Gazelli Art House, London. A song and VR music experience made in one day during the Black Lives Matter protests. BRiGHTBLACK: Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah.

Full description

A VR experience for Oculus Rift exhibited at Gazelli Art House, London. A song and VR music experience made in one day during the Black Lives Matter protests. BRiGHTBLACK: Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah.

Brief description

A live video-game playthrough using real-time virtual production, transforming childhood stories about cross-cultural identity into a performance that culminated in live music.

Full description

The Black Rabbit was created in 2020 by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah as BRiGHTBLACK. The work used real-time live virtual production on stage and was presented simultaneously to an in-person audience and a livestream audience. Structured initially as a live video-game playthrough, it told two real stories from Wilkinson and Appannah’s childhoods, exploring the experience of third-culture or cross-culture children.

The project experimented extensively with real-time virtual production. Simon Wilkinson created a bespoke virtual-production technical setup built around Unity. Over the course of the performance, the form shifted from a live playable video-game presentation into a live music performance.

Brief description

A curated exhibition of virtual-reality works at PriFest in Pristina, accompanied by a version of Immersive Story Lab.

Full description

In 2019 Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah, working as BRiGHTBLACK, curated an exhibition of virtual-reality works at PriFest in Pristina, Kosovo. The programme also included a version of Immersive Story Lab.

Brief description

An exhibition of player-centred and playable artworks by artists from the UK and Albania, accompanied by Immersive Story Lab.

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Play UK — Tirana was a 2019 edition of the player-centred exhibition project, presenting playable and immersive artworks by artists from the UK and Albania. It was shown at the gallery of the main university in Tirana and included a version of Immersive Story Lab. It was created and curated by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah under BRiGHTBLACK.

Brief description

Two strangers meet first inside a video game, then find one another by walkie-talkie and spend the day creating a unique shared moment.

Full description

A Unique and Spectacular Moment was a participatory work written, directed and performed by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah under BRiGHTBLACK. It began with two audience members in different parts of the venue, unaware of one another’s presence, each playing a video game. Their characters met inside the game and decided whether to go to work that day. The participants were then given walkie-talkies and had to locate one another within the venue before effectively 'bunking off work' together.

Following a loose skeleton script, the pair spent time talking and were guided through a sequence of conversations that culminated in devising and documenting a unique and spectacular moment together. Participants created very different moments: examples included performing simultaneous headstands in a garden, sharing a restaurant meal, and performing an acrobatic move together in public. The work premiered at Brisbane Powerhouse in Australia and was also presented at Liverpool John Moores University.

Brief description

A ten-day exhibition of player-centred video-game and immersive artworks from the UK and North Macedonia, with Immersive Story Lab and a public panel.

Full description

Play UK — Skopje was a ten-day curated exhibition at Skopje Youth Centre in North Macedonia, bringing together player-centred video-game and immersive artworks created in the UK and North Macedonia. Curated by Simon Wilkinson and Myra Appannah under BRiGHTBLACK, the programme also included a version of Immersive Story Lab and a panel discussion.

Brief description

A gallery installation of VR and written chapters of a book about AI agents co-written with the audience

Full description

A VR installation in 8 chapters which begins with 8 AI agents waking up in a virtual world, unsure of who they are, where they are or how they came to be there. Built in response to an artist residency at Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence

Brief description

A vast fake-documentary universe about a 1959 disappearance, spanning VR, AR, live cinema, gallery installation and online fiction to question how audiences determine truth.

Full description

Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping was a large-scale transmedia artwork created, written, directed and produced by Simon Wilkinson and released under circa69. It centred on a fictional mass disappearance in 1959. Eight students aged 17 and 18 from a college in Idaho travelled with their science teacher and never returned. After two weeks of searching, eight letters written by the missing young people were found laid neatly on a table inside a black cube-shaped shack ten miles into the Great Basin Desert, approximately two and a half hours from the college. The bodies of the eight students and their teacher were never found.

The project was presented as documentary rather than fiction, and the audience not knowing they were being pranked was fundamental to the work’s effect and meaning. Depending on the venue, it could operate as a full takeover or as one or several individual components. In its total form it comprised 17 virtual-reality installations, an augmented-reality experience, a feature-length documentary film performed live with electronic music, string quartet and eight performers, a gallery exhibition, and a large online transmedia universe containing around 35 fake Wikipedia pages, websites, social-media groups and other breadcrumb trails.

The work toured internationally between 2014 and 2018 to 21 nations: Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Germany, Belgium, Bosnia, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia, Turkey, Armenia, Qatar and Estonia. Presentations were commonly accompanied by a public lecture and media interviews about propaganda. The project also toured with early commissioned versions of Immersive Story Lab, a professional-development programme teaching artists to create immersive, playable, player-centred stories for VR. The overarching concern was how people decide what is true in a world defined by paid-for messages, propaganda and advertising.

Brief description

An eight-chapter VR installation placing participants inside the missing students’ letters from a first-person perspective, beginning within the mysterious cube-shaped shack.

Full description

The Cube was a multisensory virtual-reality performance and installation forming part of Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping. It comprised eight chapters, each presented through a headset and each approximately fifteen minutes long. Every chapter embodied one of the letters written by the eight missing young people, but from a first-person perspective. Participants began inside the cube-shaped shack central to the disappearance narrative and then transitioned into other spaces as each account unfolded. Chapter One was made in collaboration with Amoeba Design. The work was written, directed and produced by Simon Wilkinson.

Brief description

A live documentary-film performance with eight actors, string quartet and electronic instruments, commissioned by Federation Square in Australia.

Full description

Beyond the Bright Black Edge of Nowhere was the live documentary-film component of Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping. Created in 2014 and commissioned by Federation Square in Australia, it was performed with eight actors on stage, a string quartet and Simon Wilkinson performing electronic music live.

Brief description

An eight-chapter VR work exploring Paul Morley’s life and novels while casting doubt on what he truly knows about the 1959 disappearance.

Full description

How Can I Ease Your Mind Without Lying? was an eight-chapter virtual-reality installation commissioned by MUTEK Argentina as part of Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping. Like The Cube, it used eight headsets and eight chapters, but each chapter was experienced through the perspective and story of Paul Morley: an author in later life, the friend of one of the missing young people and the recipient of one of the eight letters.

Within the fiction, Morley writes eight completed novels and leaves a ninth unfinished. The eight chapters of the installation reference the eight completed novels and gradually build his biography, while introducing uncertainty about whether Morley is entirely truthful about what he knows concerning the disappearance. The work was written, directed and produced by Simon Wilkinson.

Brief description

A zero-gravity VR experience set in Paul Morley’s New York apartment at the instant of his death, surrounded by fragments of his unfinished ninth novel.

Full description

Slave to Mortal Rage was a virtual-reality installation within Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping, set in the present-day world of 2017. The audience enters Paul Morley’s apartment overlooking New York City at the moment he dies. Morley is absent, but at the instant of his death the apartment shifts into zero gravity and the participant is surrounded by scraps, notes and drawings connected to the unfinished ninth novel he was writing.

The work also incorporated an augmented-reality experience as part of the wider installation. It was commissioned by Brighton Digital Festival, where it premiered, and was later presented at The Old Market in Brighton before touring as part of the larger Whilst the Rest Were Sleeping project. It was written, directed and produced by Simon Wilkinson.

Brief description

A live electronic music and metaverse performance that premiered in Bologna, Italy 24th June 2017

Full description

A live electronic music and metaverse performance that happened in Bologna, Italy 24th June 2017. Presented as the beginning of the end of the Whilst The Rest Were Sleeping series of shows. It was performed only once more in Brighton, UK in 2018

Brief description

A 15-minute VR bicycle race in which audience members pedal real bikes through a surreal virtual Tour de France across the Yorkshire countryside.

Full description

Le Grand Voyage was a 15-minute interactive virtual reality installation and live performance commissioned by the Tour de France and Harrogate Theatre. Audience members wore Vuzix VR headsets while riding real bicycles mounted on stationary stands, entering a virtual journey through the Yorkshire countryside inspired by the Tour de France.

The experience took the form of a dramatic race, with participants pedalling through a surreal virtual peloton populated not only by cyclists but by animals, including dogs and cats, and other characters. Each audience member was attended by a live performer in the physical space, combining the act of real cycling with an unfolding virtual narrative. The work was co-written and co-directed by Simon Wilkinson and Sylvia Mercuriali, who also performed in the live experience.

Brief description

A participatory transmedia theatre work where ten people debated and co-created new commandments for the 21st century across live and online encounters.

Full description

The New 10 Commandments was a small-scale transmedia theatre work for ten participants at a time, created, written and directed by Simon Wilkinson in collaboration with Liyuwerk Mulugeta. The 90-minute performance invited participants to debate what a new set of ten commandments suitable for the 21st century might look like. Around fifteen minutes of scripted storytelling fragments framed and punctuated the discussions, while the performers’ wider role depended on extensive research into ethics, philosophy and social thought from the preceding 150 years. This research allowed the performers to provoke, contextualize and help participants navigate questions around morality, highlighting the difficulty of establishing a single ethical framework within a plural, postmodern society.

The live performance extended into a transmedia layer that could continue for up to two weeks. Selected participants were invited to collect parcels from specific cafés, find and interact with people through social media, and continue conversations with one another both online and in physical locations. The work was produced with funding from Arts Council England, initially made at Stratford East Theatre, and subsequently presented at The Old Market in Brighton and The Island in Bristol. Across a run of 47 performances, the script was revised after every show to incorporate contributions from previous audiences, creating an accumulating conversation in which each new group encountered and responded to the ideas of those who had come before.

Brief description

A VR performance where two participants embody trapeze artists, physically guided by live performers.

Full description

The Great Spivaldo's was an interactive, multi-sensory virtual reality installation and live performance for two audience members at a time. Wearing Vuzix VR headsets, participants became circus performers and were physically guided through the installation by live performers. While immersed in the virtual world, they navigated the real space, stepped onto a footlift and were hoisted by rope onto a platform. In VR, the platform appeared to be high inside a circus tent, while in reality it was approximately 40 centimetres above the ground. Once there, participants sat on a physical trapeze and performed trapeze acts synchronized with what they were seeing in the virtual environment, assisted throughout by performers in the real world.

The work was commissioned by the Roundhouse, London, for CircusFest. It subsequently toured to six countries, was translated into three languages, and was presented at the World Theatre Festival at Brisbane Powerhouse in Australia.

Brief description

A feature-length live video artwork built through international residencies, combining interviews about mortality and existence with minimal techno and live string quartet.

Full description

The Sound of the Wind in the Trees was a feature-length video artwork performed live with an original electronic score by Simon Wilkinson, combining minimal techno with live string quartet. The film evolved as it toured through a residency model: Wilkinson would spend between two and six weeks in each host city creating new material and incorporating it into the work. The film was built around interviews responding to a single question: 'How do you make sense of the fact that you’re standing on a ball that’s floating through space?' Inspired by an observation attributed to Joseph Campbell that this condition is something all people share, the question was used to open conversations about existence, mortality and the wisdom accumulated through lived experience, particularly with older people who had a direct awareness of their own mortality.

A prototype was funded by Screen South in 2010. The work was subsequently commissioned by Lomtrask in Sweden and by Federation Square in Australia, where the first full version premiered. It toured in Australia, Canada and the UK. A version featuring the string quartet Collectress was performed live at the Roundhouse in London. The work was also released as a limited-edition DVD artwork.

Brief description

A short film with live score devised as a prototype

Full description

Devised as a prototype for the show which followed, The Sound of the Wind in the Trees, this short film with live score asked the interviewee Crystal Dave one question, 'How do you make sense of the fact that you're standing on a ball that's flying through space?'

Brief description

A VR installation and live performance for two audience members, combining virtual kidnapping with synchronized touch, movement, smell, wind and vibration.

Full description

And the Birds Fell from the Sky was a virtual reality installation and live performance for two audience members at a time. Wearing Vuzix VR headsets, participants entered a fifteen-minute journey in which they were kidnapped by drunken Faruk clowns and transported in a blacked-out BMW. The work combined virtual imagery with precisely synchronized real-world sensations, movement and live performance.

Participants were moved through the installation in wheelchairs while immersed in VR, then transferred into a real car seat at the point where their virtual counterparts entered a car. A performer attended to each pair of audience members, introducing smells, physical objects and tactile cues in synchronization with events inside the virtual environment. The seat was connected to a subwoofer driven by a surround-audio channel, so the physical vibration intensified as the virtual car accelerated and softened when it idled. Fans created wind at corresponding moments, while objects handed to participants by virtual characters were simultaneously placed into their hands in the physical world.

The work used these synchronized sensory cues to explore presence, embodiment and the rubber hand illusion, encouraging participants to adopt the virtual body as their own. It premiered at White Night Brighton in 2010, was presented at Merge Festival at Tate Modern in 2011, and toured internationally between 2010 and 2016 to 17 countries in seven languages.

Brief description

A six-part real-time television series in which theatre audiences unknowingly became characters, with hidden-camera footage edited live into an unfolding parallel-universe mystery.

Full description

The Flop House was a six-part real-time television series and live performance presented monthly at Komedia in Brighton across 2009–2010. Audiences entered through a door marked 'The Flop House', unaware during the first episode that they had crossed into a parallel universe and were already inside the fiction. Hidden cameras throughout the venue filmed them buying drinks, taking their seats and interacting with people they assumed were fellow audience members, many of whom were actually cast. This material was edited backstage in real time and incorporated into the television episode they were about to watch.

Each event took the form of a cabaret show structured around a theme. Episode One, for example, was themed around teddy bears, with groups of short cabaret acts alternating with three ten-minute sections of a thirty-minute television episode. The ongoing story followed the disappearance of the Director General of a government security agency after the world had experienced thirty days of darkness. Installation elements onstage, live action in the venue and the filmed narrative continually crossed over: scenes audiences had just witnessed in the theatre would appear moments later within the television programme.

Across six episodes and three hours of narrative, audiences gradually learned the internal logic of the work and understood themselves to be characters within a strange disappearance mystery. The live world of the theatre operated as a parallel-universe version of Cannery Row, while the filmed world represented ordinary reality. Audience behaviour fed back into the unfolding story, placing spectators at the centre of a television series whose narrative and outcomes could be affected by their presence.

Brief description

A public projection framed as a news broadcast from 2069, using speculative future events to question how audiences decide what information is true.

Full description

Sinking Ship was a public video projection commissioned for White Night in Brighton in 2009. Its premise was that the recently activated Large Hadron Collider had created a wormhole through which a news broadcast from the year 2069 had reached the present. The broadcast reported major events from the intervening decades, including developments in artificial intelligence, the United States handing control of Afghanistan back to the Taliban, China landing on the Moon, and other extrapolated predictions.

The work used speculative fiction to extrapolate from the political and technological conditions of 2009 — including social media, the internet, hyperlink culture and changing political structures — and ask what they might imply about the future. Like a number of Wilkinson’s works from this period, it was designed to make audiences question how they determine what is true in an information environment shaped by media technologies and constructed messages.

Brief description

A short film shot on Super8 film about learning disabled drag queen Mrs.Sparkle.

Full description

A short film shot on Super8 film built around an interview with learning disabled drag queen Mrs.Sparkle (Mattahew Hellett). Matthew talks about how the process of transforming into Mrs.Sparkle makes him feel as we watch that transformation taking place..

Brief description

A virtual bike race where two audience members rode real bicycles, their pedaling controlling the speed of video journeys through Brighton.

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Journey On was an interactive video artwork commissioned by White Night Brighton in 2009, co-written and co-directed by Simon Wilkinson and Sylvia Mercuriali. The installation featured two stationary bicycles positioned in front of screens showing filmed journeys through the streets of Brighton. Two audience members raced one another by pedaling, with the speed of each bicycle directly controlling the playback speed of the corresponding film. The work combined physical effort, moving image and interactive technology, turning an ordinary journey through the city into a competitive embodied experience. Journey On premiered at White Night Brighton in 2009 and was not subsequently toured.

Brief description

A feature-length comedy following four young offenders in Brighton, funded by the Youth Offending Team and winner of a 2007 Koestler Award.

Full description

The Front was a feature-length comedy following the story of four young offenders in Brighton. It was funded by the Youth Offending Team in Brighton, written and directed by Simon Wilkinson, produced under Junk TV, and won the Koestler Award for Best Feature Film in 2007.

Brief description

It is Marty's 67th birthday, 54 pence to his name and 2 days until his pension cheque arrives.

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A man out of time observes a woman with a horse shoe size hold burnt into the back of her beautiful velvet jacket. I's his 67th birthday, he has 54 pence to his name and 2 days to wait until his pension cheque arrives.

Brief description

A three-track EP released under the name POLA, created collaboratively by Simon Wilkinson, Jari James and Rochelle Vincente.

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EP 001 was a three-track EP released in 2001 under the project name POLA, created collaboratively by Simon Wilkinson, Jari James and Rochelle Vincente.

Brief description

A whole-room installation applying the controlled-explosion painting method to furniture, media, artworks and the surrounding lounge environment.

Full description

A Controlled Lounge Explosion was a gallery exhibition presented as part of Brighton Fringe Festival in 1998. It extended Simon Wilkinson’s controlled-explosion painting method — thrown paint followed by painstaking black outlines around the resulting drips and splashes — from individual canvases to an entire room.

The installation included a sofa, television, hi-fi, bookshelf, magazine rack and paintings on the walls, all absorbed into the same visual language. The films shown on the television, music played on the hi-fi, wall works and magazines in the rack were themselves artworks created by Simon Wilkinson and Paul Dutnell. The exhibition was produced under Buck in Fudgy Productions.

Brief description

A short film about failed men

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A short film featuring Stephen Steele about failed men

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A 1998 album by CHARLA, released by Simon Wilkinson through Buck in Fudgy Audiophonics.

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Kattenburger Brug was an album released in 1998 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA.

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A 1997 short film produced under the Junk TV name.

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D.I.C.K.I² was a short film produced in 1997 and released under Junk TV.

Brief description

A punk film collective making, curating and screening low- and no-budget films while enabling communities to use video for self-representation and advocacy.

Full description

Junk TV was a collaborative punk film project led by Simon Wilkinson and Paul Dutnell from 1997 to 2007. It made, curated and screened collections of low- and no-budget short films created with a punk aesthetic, with screenings and activity in Brighton, Hove, London, Nottingham, Baltimore, Amsterdam — including W139 TV — and France.

Alongside its own films and themed screenings, Junk TV developed participatory filmmaking projects with young offenders in prisons, travellers, women, disabled people, people of colour, LGBT groups, school students in low-income areas, homeless people and refugees. It established refugee film festivals, two disability film festivals, a young people’s film festival, themed Junk TV events, and Quick Flicks screenings devoted to films under one minute.

The project was influenced by Paulo Freire, the Combahee River Collective and other thinkers and movements concerned with intersectional struggle, using film and video as practical tools through which communities could represent and advocate for themselves. Junk TV was a multi-award-winning company, including recognition associated with the UK Film Council and BFI, and a National Lottery Best Lottery Funded Art Project award in 2008.

Brief description

A series of acrylic and marker-pen paintings built from thrown paint whose drips and splashes were subsequently outlined in black.

Full description

A Series of Controlled Explosions was a 1996 painting series using acrylic and marker pen on canvas. The works developed Simon Wilkinson’s 'controlled explosion' method: paint was thrown or splashed onto a surface and the resulting drips, marks and splashes were then painstakingly outlined in black marker. The series was exhibited at the Gen Ogley Gallery in Nottingham.

Brief description

Nine acrylic-on-canvas paintings of dancers drawn from Nottingham’s free-party scene.

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Dancers was a series of nine acrylic-on-canvas paintings made in 1996, depicting dancers and visual material drawn from the free-party scene in Nottingham.

Brief description

A documentary following a UK man in his mid-twenties as he describes his experience of a psychotic episode.

Full description

Charlie was a 1996 documentary about a man in his mid-twenties in the UK who takes the viewer through his experience of a psychotic episode. It was released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

Brief description

A 1996 album by CHARLA, released by Simon Wilkinson through Buck in Fudgy Audiophonics.

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Keep Your Cool or Lose Your Cheese Dunkies was released in 1996 and was CHARLA’s sixth home-studio album.

Brief description

A 1996 film written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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Nobby Whelkston Urban Sadhu was a film made in 1996, written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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A short film made in 1996 and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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Voyeur was a short film made in 1996 and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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A 1995 film written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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Lepidoptera at Der Schmetterling Bar was a film made in 1995, written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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A feature-length film written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and produced under Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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Crooked Pins and Bent Syringe was a feature-length film made in 1994, written and directed by Simon Wilkinson and released through Buck in Fudgy Productions.

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A 1994 album by CHARLA, released by Simon Wilkinson through Buck in Fudgy Audiophonics.

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Tell Melanie You Love Her was an album released in 1994 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA.

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A 1994 album by CHARLA, released by Simon Wilkinson through Buck in Fudgy Audiophonics.

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Crooked Pins and Bent Syringe was an album released in 1994 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA.

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A 1993 album by CHARLA, released by Simon Wilkinson through Buck in Fudgy Audiophonics.

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Buta's Breezy Beach Resort was an album released in 1993 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA.

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A 1993 album by CHARLA, released by Simon Wilkinson through Buck in Fudgy Audiophonics.

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Journey was an album released in 1993 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA.

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A 1993 album by CHARLA, one of three albums released by Simon Wilkinson under the name that year.

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Belly Full of Feathers was an album released in 1993 by Simon Wilkinson under the artist name CHARLA. It was the second home-studio album released under that name.

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A self-titled album by Wood Goblins, created collaboratively by Simon Wilkinson, Paul Dutnell and David Parker.

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Wood Goblins was a self-titled album released in 1991 by the collaborative project Wood Goblins.

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A self-titled EP by Wood Goblins, created collaboratively by Simon Wilkinson, Paul Dutnell and David Parker.

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Wood Goblins was a self-titled EP released in 1991 by the collaborative project Wood Goblins.

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An album-length cassette of manipulated records, tape loops, television and microphone recordings, and sounds generated with an Oric-1 home computer.

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Dream Tapes #1 was Simon Wilkinson’s first substantial artwork: an album-length cassette assembled from strange and manipulated sounds. Source material included records played at the wrong speed, microphone recordings, sounds recorded from television and looped on tape, tape loops, and sounds made with an Oric-1 home computer.