Bridging Worlds was a solo exhibition that brought together artworks, interactive systems, and long-running projects from different parts of my practice. The work sits across physical gallery presentation and online digital contexts, including Web3, and connects my work as a software developer with my work as an artist. It also reflects a practice that moves between independent making, collaborative projects, and research or experimental work. The title Bridging Worlds refers to these crossings, between online and in-person experience, technical and artistic roles, and different communities and ways of working, rather than a single medium or output.
People encountered Bridging Worlds in different ways.
Some visitors started by reading the posters, following the threads between projects, tools, and timelines. Others went straight to the interactive systems or the work on the walls and then circled back to the context. In practice, most conversations moved between all three.
The posters gave people something concrete to point at when asking questions about process, decisions, and constraints. That often shifted discussion away from surface description and towards how the work had been made.
The interactive pieces created a different kind of entry point. When a system responded in real time, through sound, motion, or behaviour, it gave people something immediate to talk about.
Alongside this, there was a mixed reality experience using VR headsets where visitors could still see the gallery space around them, but with virtual bubbles floating in the room. People could move through the space and pop the bubbles, blending the physical environment with a simple, playful virtual interaction.
The work on the walls sat naturally alongside this. Talking through how those pieces were produced often changed how people looked at them.
During the week, visitors had the opportunity to see themselves captured and re-rendered as bubble-packed figures in real time. In a quieter moment, I stepped in front of the webcam myself and took it a bit further. The system captured me dancing live, turned me into a bubble-packed alien, and that performance became the basis for the video.
The result is closer to a music video than a documentation clip. It pairs a deliberately playful song I made for it, “Bubble Alien”, with that live-captured performance, and places the bubble-packed version of me on a series of different worlds, including the Bubble Planet mentioned in the lyrics.
There was also a small coffee collaboration with Little Havana (The Coffee Store Leith Ltd), with a custom blend available in bags featuring bespoke artwork.
I did hope the coffee would sell, and it did (and needed restocking). What surprised me was how well other things moved too: artworks, coasters, t-shirts, books, cards. I have done plenty of art and craft fairs, often as part of artist groups and collectives, where sales have sometimes been slow or non-existent, so seeing people buy things during the week genuinely caught me off guard, in a good way.
More than anything, the week functioned as a way of putting my work in front of people and saying: this is me, this is what I do. Having the space open, being there to talk things through, and letting people spend time with the work meant those introductions could happen properly, without trying to compress everything into a single explanation. The conversations that came out of that are already carrying on beyond the exhibition.
Posted: January 11, 2026 by David Oxley
Written by
David Oxley
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