Robin McNicholas

As co-founder and Creative Director of Marshmallow Laser Feast & co-founder of creative collective Flat-e, Robin McNicholas has experienced working on large-scale performances and live music events for artists such as U2, Lenny Kravitz and Aphex Twin. His desire to shift the audiences’ role from passive spectators to active participants has been realised with projects such as a live performance with Professor Richard Dawkins on internet ‘meme’s using integrated digital platforms and capabilities.

A project for Saatchi & Saatchi – Feel the Reel (2014) – involved a screening made up of films by 18 new directors as part of the Cannes Lyon Film Festival of Creativity 2014. The performance generated was integral to the screening experience as the physiological changes of individuals’ emotional response was monitored and broadcast through a colour changing bracelet, so that boredom, excitement, fear, sadness were made visible to everyone participating. In this way the audience use digital and technological innovations to reflect upon the contemporary prevalence of digital culture through translating it into a live, physical participation.

Robin has been developing his own artistically-driven practice under the alias ‘Abberapippum’ and is currently working on a performance using 3D virtual reality film for the Oculus Rift, motion capture of a dancer/aerialist, a virtual set and a physical film set.

Robin McNicholas will be speaking at the Digital Exhibitions Summit 2026 :

Digital Dreams: From Exhibition to Experience

What does it take to make knowledge felt in the body, not just land in the mind? We’ve spent years embedded alongside ecologists, archaeologists, and scientists, and what we’ve found is this: By supporting learning through experience, we help audiences grasp ideas and stories not only intellectually but with their senses, encountering ideas from unfamiliar vantage points. In this session, we share the methods and moments of wonder from that process. How do you make an audience feel something they didn’t know they were missing? How does technology serve a story, rather than steal it? Come with us into the fieldwork, the collections, the research as we explore new forms of culture, interrogate our relationship with the world around us and leave a glittery slug trail as we journey through the cosmos.