Ghosts of Solid Air

Reveal rebellious heroes from across time with the power of your voice

Premiered at the 67th BFI London Film Festival, GHOSTS OF SOLID AIR is an interactive Augmented Reality (AR) story for your phone, Ghosts of Solid Air takes you into a world of radical voices and shadows.

On a journey from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament, you speak and the ghosts speak back, pressing through an invisible membrane with messages for you.

Through an encounter with those who have been pushed beyond their tipping point – this experience asks: where does disobedience come from?

Walk with the ghosts – and decide for yourself.

Ghosts of Solid Air is an interactive story that you explore on location in central London.

Wearing headphones, you open the app on your phone – standing somewhere in Trafalgar Square. You hear two voices, speaking to you in unison, swirling around your head with meticulously crafted sound design. These are the voices at the gate – and they persuade you to speak up. Bit by bit, as you softly murmur into your phone, the ghost world is revealed – a strange world of pink sky, drifting mist and indistinct figures.

As you explore, you meet a host of characters from across time who were radicalised through personal experience and forced into disobedient action.

These characters are based on real people from history.

You meet Olaudah Equiano haunting the statues of Trafalgar Square – enslaved as a child, he became an abolition activist with one of the earliest-known examples of published writing by an African in the UK.

Udham Singh paces around Horse Guards Parade – an Indian revolutionary, he witnessed the Amritsar massacre of 1919 and eventually murdered the British Army general who was responsible.

And Josie McGowan – the first woman to die at the hands of the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1918 – keeps watch on the police stationed at the back of Downing Street.

As each ghost tells their story, of violent memories, moments of change and reasons to rebel, the voices at the gate keep bringing the story back to you. What makes you angry, and what words can you find to speak that anger out into the world?

You can only stay in the ghost world for so long – and when you finally reach Parliament Square, voices from now occupy the airwaves. What felt like a ghost world rooted in the past has become a sea of voices both past and present, woven together.

As the voices of contemporary activists who have spoken up fill the airwaves on the grass in front of Big Ben – you are invited to consider: what will you hold onto from all these voices – which stories will you tell?

Visit Ghosts of Solid Air’s dedicated website for more information.

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Team

Director & Co-Writer

Amy Rose

Co-Writer

Sonali Bhattacharyya

Developer

Phill Tew

Dramaturg

Caroline Williams

3D Artist

Will Young

Art Director

Mireille Fauchon

Sound Designer

Axel Kacoutié

Graphic Designer

Oscar Cheung

Community Coordinator and Researcher

Sahar Bano Malik

Strategic Producer

Chi Thai

Executive Producer

John Hunter

Creative Producer (R&D)

Amaya Jeyarajah Dent

Studio Producer

Leonardo Lami

Motion Capture Performer

Tara Silverthorn

Fundraiser

Katie Welford

Head of Communications

Elaine Hsu

Website Designer

Will Brady

Credits

Co-Creators Group

Janache John Baptiste, Kusheema Nurse, Laurice McIntosh Cargill, Maia Nurse, Caroline Francis, Hannah Daisy

Gatekeeper

Tatenda Naomi Matsvai, Tim McMullan

Olaudah

Abraham Popoola

Udham

Aaron Neil

Josie

Imogen Doel

Parliament Square Activists

Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt, Dan Glass, Edward Daffarn, Navern Kruz

Archive sound recordings

Courtesy of Ian Rawes and London Sound Survey

With Thanks To

We Are Parable, Professor Rodney Harrison, University College London. Dr. Colin Sterling, University of Amsterdam, CAMERA Studio, University of Bath, Sophie Naftalin of Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, David Baldwin at City of London, Sophie Develyn for dramaturg support, Keir Vine and his amazing studio