Working with Exeter-based arts organisation, Kaleider, the University of Exeter commissioned leading multi-media artist Duncan Speakman to produce a technologically innovative, augmented reality work. The work takes the form of a headset that listeners can book out from our Streatham or Penryn campuses, which is accompanied by a small booklet to guide them on a walk around our beautiful campuses.

In the context of the University of Exeter's leading climate science research, the work explores how environmental change can appear remote, while still being connected to our immediate lives. Using sound recordings from the windy deserts of Tunisia and crumbling coasts of Norfolk, the listener is guided on a speculative walk through a future of flooding, loss and astonishment. The experience loops through disorientation and discovery until, after twenty minutes, it arrives back at its starting point. Completing this walk feels like returning from a journey through a distant place and time. The steps taken are few and gentle, but the experience is so powerful that the normality that you return to feels utterly changed.

Only Expansion is commissioned by University of Exeter Arts And Culture. It was developed with support from Lydgalleriet Bergen, Theatre in The Mill Bradford, and Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants.

To book out a headset from our Drama Department, please contact the Arts and Culture team.