Work it, make it, do it, makes us...

Today I helped to transform Trinity college into an institute for the permanently bewildered. At first we wanted to create a prison but we felt that an asylum would be more in keeping with the air of manic holiday-making as tourists hotfooted it around the yards and green spaces in search of celtic treasures. I was taking part in the Ahead of the Game workshop organised by Make-and-Do-PlayFair . It was led by Duncan Speakman, director of Subtlemob and all round instigator of silent street events. Duncan likes invisible theatre, the kind that happens while watching people move through everyday life. He likes technology, the kind that everyone has in their pockets - mobile phones, headphones, mp3's. He showed us how to use these everyday gadgets to create cinematic soundscapes which made the brick and stone buildings of Trinity fade away in front of our eyes.

We took turns experimenting with headphone tours. The university became a playground, a puzzle or a pilgrimage, depending on how we varied the sensory layers. We could scale it up visually or bring it down to microscopic level, speed it up to panic stations or slow the pace back through the use of voice and sound effects. In the afternoon we created a walking tour of the new state of the art Trinity Centre for the Permanently Bewildered, complete with cobble-stone therapy, bicycle recreation and other progressive rehabilitation techniques.

We learned how to create ghosts using cameras. We learned how the simplest of actions can have the most unexpected and unintended of consequences. We played mobile-phone hide and seek. Even the tourists played their part, walking around in circles and stopping every now and then as they tried to figure out what exactly they were supposed to be looking at. Rules of game-playing became apparent as we experimented. There were rules and a lot of the time they were asking to be broken.

It was great to just spend the day with like minded mischief-makers. Workshops are great for that. I also loved the fact that it was quick and easy to create little worlds and to see people enter them. It was quick to see what worked and what didn't and how to change it next time so that it worked better. It was the sort of workshop where you are sitting on the bus on the way home, thinking of different scenarios and how to pan them out using different methods.

Joust for Fun

Jousting in the 12th century in Trim involved broken bones, cracked skulls, knights in shining armour and the ring of steel echoing off the castle walls. It was no fun. Oulala is more into having a bit of craic so we decided to do our own take on medieval jousting. It still involves beautiful maids and knights charging about the place trying to win mock battles but it's a lot less dangerous. Unless, of course, you fear your pride being hurt.
We spent the day down at the Trim Haymaking Festival overlooking the Norman castle. Names were made in the Porchfield as the local Lords and Ladies (Aidan Mitchell from Trim Drama Group and his lovely wife Angela) knighted those who survived the tournament.



We even had a fair maid from Cavan (Lady Russell) who threw her veil down and picked up the gauntlet. Strange times indeed!



For more pictures Click here

Spaghetti Brains!

I was eating spaghetti bolognese in Bristol at the weekend. I needed to stock up on carbs because I was about to run in 2.8 Hours Later , the zombie game that happens as part of Igfest in Bristol every year. The city centre was full of grown adults all playing very strange games with each other and having fun.



The spaghetti might be my last proper meal I figured, and I knew that I had a long run ahead of me. We queued up with over 200 other people to play this game on a Saturday night in this bustling city centre. After receiving a quick briefing, we were let loose with a map and told to make our way to the zombie resistance HQ. In order to find the HQ we had to run through zombie infested areas, find clues and try and stick together. The latter proved impossible as we were picked off by brain-hungry zombies in alleyways, underpasses, parks and shopping centres. Zombies are not as stupid as you think. They wait for food to come along and then they run after it. The hungrier they are, the quicker they run. The nearer we got to the HQ, the quicker the zombies seemed to become. They must have been olympic sprinters before they got infected. You never knew when or where a zombie would appear so the body and mind was on full alert, adrenaline flowing and the blood pumping getting ready to scarper if they appeared around the next corner. We got lost, got frightened and made new friends along the way. Survival was the name of the game and us humans tend to last longer when we work together. Very few made it to the HQ without being infected. They were just too fast for a lot of us in the end. As a game, it is well designed. It combines the sensation of genuine fear with running like mad while grinning like a ten year old, and we all remember what that feels like. Inside you were screened for infection and if you were given the all-clear you could go and have your picture taken as a zombie survivor. Those of us who got infected were not so lucky.