23 March 2004
Nottingham Evening Post
Egg Boxes? Fishing Rods? A portal to another dimension? Ah yes, it must be Reactor, the Nottingham based Arts Collective who specialise in turning the concept of a n ‘arts event’ on its head with a blend of cunning, left – field creativity and a healthy sense of deep satire.
After sending up the city’s NOW festival last autumn, they surface again at this weekend’s Screenplay computer – game event at Broadway cinema and cafe bar. The whole shebang has had oodles of publicity in the Post this week, so we won’t repeat it. Suffice to say Reactor’s contribution is GHAOS ZX – “an exploration of virtual reality through the medium of the egg box.”
We ask Reactor to talk us thro ugh it; spokesman Niki Russell emailed us back to explain that the idea was developed after Reactor’s take on last year’s NOW festival. He added: “Some strange events took place – one of which was a close scrape we had with the VIRTUAL – we believe that we have found a portal to this other dimension – the egg box and that the worlds of the ATARI 2600, Spectrum ZX and the Nintendo Gameboy can in fact be reached by people from the ‘real’ world.”
Ghaos, by the way is defined as: “1. utter light – hearted confusion. 2. cheerful formless matter supposed to have existed before the universe’s carefree creation. 3. dissolute. 4. showy behaviour so unpredictable as to appear random.” Got that? Good. Expect plenty of audience interaction and the use of fishing rods as Reactor do whatever it is they aim to do in the name of the low – tech egg box and the retro high – tech of Sir Clive Sinclair’s seminal PCs.