Eye Candy
Hungry Hungry Eat Head from Bren O'Callaghan on Vimeo.
It's tough when you're in competition with 2098 shows in 265 venues in a city that for a month each year becomes home to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Tough, but not impossible. Thanks to Hudson-Powell, Joel Gethin Lewis and the leap of faith required by City of Edinburgh Council who were very polite about my asking if they wouldn't mind if we beheaded their citizens and placed them in a giant cartoon for the afternoon.
After this, our beta launch, we went on to delight the city of Liverpool during AND: Abandon Normal Devices Festival of New Cinema and Digital Culture. If you too can find a way to step into your daydreams and earn enough to get by, I definitely recommend it. Read more about Hungry Hungry Eat Head here.
Tales of Two Cities
With an OCD fury not seen since the woman in the Shake 'n Vac advert ground her Valium and mixed it with a glug of Bacardi, I've been plugging the cracks in this site and pasting up former production duties with a vengeance. My personal favourites A Wall is a Screen now have a page to themselves, as do the rapidly expanding MegaPhone team - flying the flag for those of us who see no reason why computer games should progress beyond the Atari era. Once upon a festival, The Light Surgeons conjured up a storm in a Gothic salon and The Royal Opera House treat us to no fewer than twelve outdoor relays in the past five years.
Into The Woods
You can never have enough magic capes, as I discovered earlier last year. Shamefully I have only just got around to documenting this particular project for the Big Screen Liverpool from Charlotte Gould in partnership with moves, although thanks are also due to my friend Mandy Tolley for creating the most intensely red cloak with the biggest button I have ever seen. Yes, even bigger than Kirsty Allsopp's secret cache.
Tickled pink
And so the curtain falls after five days, 15 x 1 hour slots and - as an approximate guess - some 5,000 open-jawed observers for Chris O'Shea's public space sensation. Inspired by Land of the Giants, a massive hand chased and tickled shoppers who jostled and whooped to attract the attention of the unknown (actually automated) operator. As one delighted lady of advanced years remarked, "I haven't had a man's hand all over me like that in years!"
It was especially gratifying that it should reach so many people who would never otherwise be aware of the AND Festival of which this was part, especially the elderly, families, children and those of foreign origin who were able to engage without any language barriers; humour being universal.
Saturday saw a six-hour stretch and double bill with the second appearance of Hungry Hungry Eat Head following this Summer's debut at the Big Screen Edinburgh. Creators Joel Gethin-Lewis and Jody Hudson-Powell had added some new animated elements, resulting in pulsing alien brains, panting tongues and blinking eyes to enhance the experience. Everyone loved clutching and waving the cardboard markers, freed from the snobbish associations of pocket hardware and somehow more magical for it. "How do you do it?" was the often repeated question, and being present in the space we were able to explain the method for different levels of comprehension.
It's great to be able to lift the lid to those of all ages on what can seem out utterly baffling, especially via face-to-face so it remains conversational in tone. It's this aspect in a sense that offers true interactivity, while repeat insistence even when told otherwise that the hand is controlled by a living, breathing person (with some playfully accusing total strangers - "Is it you? Have you got the remote in your pocket?"), offers a fascinating insight to human psychology in attributing human characteristics... in this case, of a benign bum-tickling reincarnation of Benny Hill!
Squish squash
The Hand From Above
Chris O'Shea and I first met when I was lurking in an online forum, dashing from my spider-hole to entrap the tastiest prey/interactive talent. Only he bit back (not the face Chris, not the face!), erring on the side of caution and we've been circling each other ever since. It took every last drop from my scent glands, but now we have him... for both myself (Liverpool, Edinburgh) and all the other screens in the family to nibble on. Oh, what a tasty treat he will be! His reward is a significant new screen commission - The Hand From Above - to debut in Liverpool during the AND Festival and tour the entire network thereafter. Unsuspecting pedestrians will be clutched, tickled, stretched or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity that will treat us with the disdain deserving of our insignificant species. More news as the Pantheon allow it.