Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder?
Next: Saturday, 19 July 2025
Runs until Sunday, 5 October 2025 (See all dates)
- Time
- 12:00 - 13:00
- Venue
- Firstsite, Colchester, CO1 1JH
- Price
- Free
What does it mean to grow up autistic in a digital world? Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder invites you on a sensory, emotional, and digital journey.
More Information (Actual Radio is not responsible for external websites)
What does it mean to grow up autistic in a digital world?
Follow the story of an autistic person ‘growing up online’ – navigating message boards, building a digital avatar and finding new friends.
In this digital space, they learn, explore, and discover new ways to connect, access education, and find work outside of social barriers and stigma.
Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder invites you on a sensory, emotional, and digital journey through art, technology, and the world we build online. It is shaped by the conversations and experiences of autistic and disabled people from SEN schools, support groups, video games, and other online spaces.
Through video art, animation, sculpture, paintings, drawings, photography, and more, this exhibition explores how art and technology, from TV to Tumblr, video games to dating apps, have shaped lives, identity, intimacy, and imagination.
About the exhibition
Unlike many stories about technology that focus on risk, harm, or surveillance, this exhibition highlights how art and digital tools can support imagination, connection, education, and new opportunities for employment.
For autistic and disabled communities, especially, these tools may open up new ways to communicate, learn, and form relationships outside of social barriers.
The exhibition also explores how visual communication, shaped by online experiences, can be used offline to create more inclusive spaces, where connection and understanding come more easily to everyone.
Essex and the making of social networks
The exhibition’s name comes from Voyager 2000, an early interactive TV system tested in Colchester’s schools that gave people their first taste of on-demand content, learning, and online games.
From Essex’s early innovations – like Chelmsford’s pioneering radio and Colchester’s world-first mass multiplayer online game (MUD) – to today’s platforms like OnlyFans, Essex has helped shape the world’s social networks we use now.
What to Expect
Move through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as the exhibition takes you through rooms themed around human stories shaped by technology.
Discover artworks like green-screen music videos, nostalgic Tumblr influenced photographs, anime-inspired works, Instagram art history meme graphics, tapestries of blog selfies, and sculptures made from LEGO and found materials.
See new commissions by artist S from our Holiday Fun programme alongside works by artists selected through an open call.
Follow the story of an autistic person ‘growing up online’ – navigating message boards, building a digital avatar and finding new friends.
In this digital space, they learn, explore, and discover new ways to connect, access education, and find work outside of social barriers and stigma.
Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder invites you on a sensory, emotional, and digital journey through art, technology, and the world we build online. It is shaped by the conversations and experiences of autistic and disabled people from SEN schools, support groups, video games, and other online spaces.
Through video art, animation, sculpture, paintings, drawings, photography, and more, this exhibition explores how art and technology, from TV to Tumblr, video games to dating apps, have shaped lives, identity, intimacy, and imagination.
About the exhibition
Unlike many stories about technology that focus on risk, harm, or surveillance, this exhibition highlights how art and digital tools can support imagination, connection, education, and new opportunities for employment.
For autistic and disabled communities, especially, these tools may open up new ways to communicate, learn, and form relationships outside of social barriers.
The exhibition also explores how visual communication, shaped by online experiences, can be used offline to create more inclusive spaces, where connection and understanding come more easily to everyone.
Essex and the making of social networks
The exhibition’s name comes from Voyager 2000, an early interactive TV system tested in Colchester’s schools that gave people their first taste of on-demand content, learning, and online games.
From Essex’s early innovations – like Chelmsford’s pioneering radio and Colchester’s world-first mass multiplayer online game (MUD) – to today’s platforms like OnlyFans, Essex has helped shape the world’s social networks we use now.
What to Expect
Move through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as the exhibition takes you through rooms themed around human stories shaped by technology.
Discover artworks like green-screen music videos, nostalgic Tumblr influenced photographs, anime-inspired works, Instagram art history meme graphics, tapestries of blog selfies, and sculptures made from LEGO and found materials.
See new commissions by artist S from our Holiday Fun programme alongside works by artists selected through an open call.
Venue
Firstsite
Lewis Gardens, High Street, Colchester, Essex
Colchester
CO1 1JH
Dates
The event runs from 12:00 to 13:00 on the following dates.
Select a date to add this event to your calendar app.
- July 29th
- July 30th
- July 31st
- August 1st
- August 2nd
- August 3rd
- August 4th
- August 5th
- August 6th
- August 7th
- August 8th
- August 9th
- August 10th
- August 11th
- August 12th
- August 13th
- August 14th
- August 15th
- August 16th
- August 17th
- August 18th
- August 19th
- August 20th
- August 21st
- August 22nd
- August 23rd
- August 24th
- August 25th
- August 26th
- August 27th
- August 28th
- August 29th
- August 30th
- August 31st
- September 1st
- September 2nd
- September 3rd
- September 4th
- September 5th
- September 6th
- September 7th
- September 8th
- September 9th
- September 10th
- September 11th
- September 12th
- September 13th
- September 14th
- September 15th
- September 16th
- September 17th
- September 18th
- September 19th
- September 20th
- September 21st
- September 22nd
- September 23rd
- September 24th
- September 25th
- September 26th
- September 27th
- September 28th
- September 29th
- September 30th
- October 1st
- October 2nd
- October 3rd
- October 4th
- October 5th
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