Projects
The Distance Between Beats Is The Only Distance Between Us
The Distance Between Beats Is The Only Distance Between Us
An ancient and intimate rhythm game built from beats created with migrant communities, where players unlock worlds of migration, memory and myth by holding beat patterns. Through rhythm, the story of how people arrive and find each other in the UK becomes something shared, something felt.
The Distance Between Beats Is The Only Distance Between Us is an experimental rhythm game exploring migration through music, memory and play. Beats created with migrant communities become playable worlds, where rhythm patterns carry fragments of homelands and the places where we find each other again: auntie’s kitchens, community centre parties and underground dance floors. By holding beat patterns, players unlock layers of sound, image and story, encountering mythic figures that embody cultural memory rather than enemies to defeat.
Experiment
£20,000
“Words feel overwhelming right now, it's a very loud world and all that noise is breaking us down. This project searches for another way in, one that's been there all along. Through rhythm, play and being together, I think we can start trusting each other again.”
Aims of the Project
The project builds from Myra Appannah’s technical experiments combining music production, game engines and open source AI tools to translate embodied musical knowledge into playable form. Developed in collaboration with Asylum Link in Toxteth, Music Futures and LJMU, workshops with migrant participants will generate beats, stories and mythic characters that directly shape the prototype. The experience will be designed with and around the community and may take the form of a collaborative AR experience, a shared screen-based game, or a hybrid of both, culminating in a community showcase where participants, families and audiences experience the work together. It also explores how grassroots music venues could adopt playable / installation-based experiences to address the changing and challenging future that the grassroots scene faces.
An intimate and ancient experimental rhythm game where sound becomes a way to feel and unite the UK’s story of migration.
Beats created with migrant communities become playable worlds. Rhythm patterns carry fragments of homelands and the places where we find each other again: auntie’s kitchens, community centre parties, underground dance floors. And where words fail, we understand in our bodies the journeys taken, the bonds broken and remade, the myths travelling across oceans and arriving in the UK.
Players meet rhythms moving through space. When they hold the beat, layers of sound and image unfold. Music grows, environments shift, and mythic figures begin to appear. These figures are not enemies to defeat but embodiments of cultural memory, co-created with migrant participants.
The prototype builds from my own technical experiments. Using open-source LLMs, I created a Lua script in Reaper that finally generated the Mauritian Sega rhythm I had struggled to capture for years. That breakthrough revealed how open-source AI tools can help unlock embodied musical knowledge and translate rhythm, memory and myth into playable form.
The experience will be designed with and around the participating communities. Depending on what feels most accessible and meaningful, the prototype may take the form of a collaborative AR experience, a shared screen-based game, or a hybrid of both.
The project is developed in collaboration with Asylum Link in Toxteth, working with people who have recently arrived in Liverpool. Through workshops participants share beats, stories and mythic characters that directly shape the prototype.
The work culminates in a community showcase where participants, families and audiences experience the prototype together. It also explores how grassroots music venues could adopt playable / installation-based experiences to address the changing and challenging future of grassroots music.
Meet the team
Myra Appannah
Lead Artist
she/they
Myra Appannah is a self-taught artist and co-director of BRiGHTBLACK. A BAFTA-longlisted writer and Creative Lead of *“one of the most influential UK immersive experiences of the last 20 years”* (UKRI), her work spans and blends large-scale immersive experiences, interactive installations, XR, games, film, audio, AI and live performance. The endeavour is to reach people with stories they have not heard before, in ways they have not felt them. And in doing so, to hold power to account.
Simon Wilkinson
Artist
he/him
Simon Wilkinson is an artist working across immersive media, virtual reality, and emerging technologies whose work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern and toured to 36 countries over the past 15 years. An early pioneer of VR as an artistic medium with more than two decades of immersive practice, he has been described by Cineuropa as “one of the most notable names in Europe dealing with VR,” and is the creator of the international training programme Immersive StoryLab (running since 2014), Artist-in-Residence in AI at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence since 2017, and founder of the Electric Dreaming Artist’s AI Lab at University of Cambridge.
Dr. Hatana El-Jarn
Senior Lecturer in Media Production
she/her
Dr. Hatana El-Jarn is a Senior Lecturer in Media Production at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research interests focus on mediated technologies and the ways in which individuals and communities communicate, co-create, and interact through them. Hatana’s research activities also intersect with her design practice, which she explores from both a practical and theoretical perspective.
Ewan Roberts
Centre Manager
Ewan Roberts is Centre Manager for Asylum Link (Merseyside), managing a multi-functional Asylum and Refuge hub.
Pete Woodbridge
Creative Technologist
Pete Woodbridge is a creative engineer/technologist working on software development, innovation in real-time production, immersive experiences, creative AI, interactive media and generative ai solutions & workflow innovation. Pete is currently the R&D Innovation Lead at the MusicFutures Creative Cluster in Liverpool City Region, and has have formerly been the Innovation Director at the MediaCity Innovation Hub and DreamLab.
