Brighton Beach Hosts a Virtual Reality First – With a Cocktail in Hand
A new virtual reality experience launched on Brighton seafront this weekend – and it comes with a real-world cocktail to sip while you explore an alternate reality.
This unusual event combination offering a new approach to time out with friends, starts today Monday 28th April and runs through a short residency at Shelter Hall on Brighton beach, Sussex through to Thursday 1st May. Slots are every 15 minutes each day of the sojourn in Brighton this week.
Existent, a spatial computing platform, has teamed up with rum producers MAHIKI and Shelter Hall’s Skylark Cocktail Bar to offer a “first-of-its-kind” immersive experience. This event is aimed at everyone, but especially people who aren’t gamers to look at experiencing this virtual reality format in different ways and doing so with friends.
Photo credit: Nicola Benge
Those wanting to visit in the glorious spring sunshine, and try out this new approach to virtual reality can book, and saunter along Brighton’s seafront to Shelter Hall, and there, don VR headsets and be transported into a fully interactive, controller-free world – where, somewhere inside the virtual landscape, a bartender will hand them a real MAHIKI Pineapple Coconut Rum Spritz to enjoy.
Unlike traditional VR, where clunky controllers and complicated tutorials can often kill the magic, Existent promises something more intuitive: guests will be able to see and interact with their friends naturally, move freely around the space, and focus entirely on the experience.
Dan Webb and Andy Brunskill, Existent’s co-founders, said they were excited to bring the technology to Brighton. “There’s nothing else like this,” Webb said. “You just turn up, move around as yourself, and somehow, impossibly, someone hands you a drink inside a virtual world. It’s real magic.”
What can visitors expect?
The experience itself is designed for pairs of guests at a time, and slots must be booked in advance.
- Participants travel in pairs through an immersive VR environment.
- Experience Existent’s controller-free, full-body VR technology.
- Enjoy a MAHIKI Rum Spritz – for real, in VR. Served to you by a real performer, appearing as your host.
Although Brighton is no stranger to experimental events, blending VR, hospitality, and seafront sunshine is an unusual combination — and if early reactions are anything to go by, it could be a hit with those looking for a new kind of night out.
Whether it becomes a summer sensation or a short-lived novelty remains to be seen — but for now, the chance to sip a cocktail while walking through another dimension sounds like an invitation many Brighton residents and visitors won’t want to miss.
As someone completely oblivious to gaming, I am bang on target for trying this event out. So oblivious in fact that when living in San Francisco in 2006, I got a user experience gig road-testing Twitter (then in its infancy) and told founder Jack Dorsey that “I didn’t get the point of it?”. So I am known for my incapacity to call new trends! However this experience is definitely something I can see the potential for.
It was a great bonding experience with my friend in such a different way, it involved going out rather than staying home alone in one’s bedroom, incorporating cocktails (what’s not to like?!), and an amazing view of the West Pier in Hove at sunset. It also got us really talking about the future, technology and the way we socialise. I can see the benefits of developing this for parties, shows and community events to get people together and enjoying nights out in a very different way.
The event lasts 15 minutes, but it felt like much longer and I found it invigorating to be trying something so different from my day-to-day life. It was quite transcendent in some ways. The parting cocktail was a definite benefit too! For Shelter Hall, which is becoming a well-known Brighton food and drink venue since reopening in 2020, the event is a next step in offering something beyond the ordinary.
As a seasoned theatre producer, Andy Brunskill (one of Existent’s co-founders) is not someone who seems like a ‘techie’ but has an interesting approach to using this technology in creative and engaging ways to encourage friends to get together, using virtual reality (and cocktails) to facilitate this.
Having attended a different kind of VR event in recent months, an exploration of the late 1980s rave scene (In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats) which I adored, I feel that there are such creative ways to explore this growing field and very happy to experience this in new formats for those of us who want technology to enhance our friendships and community. This medium can help to bring us together and I am here for that!
Event details: The Light Garden at Shelter Hall.
Open: 2pm-9pm Monday, 28th April – Thursday, 1st May.
Booking: https://bit.ly/4cRD545
Address: SHELTER HALL, Brighton, BN1 1NB
