Four Unmissable Visual and Digital Installations at Auckland Fringe

Ever interacted with a digital animal, played a video game projected onto the fascade of a building or been part of a joystick orchestra? Now's your chance. During Auckland Fringe 2013, you can stand back and watch or become part of some very cool digital and visual installations.

Concrete Playground went to find out a bit about the picks of the bunch. Oh and all the interactive installations featured here are free for your entertainment.

Jeu Play

When: Fri March 1, 5-9pm. Sat March 2, 12-9pm. Sun March 3, 12-7pm.

Where: Silo Park, Wynyard Quarter.

Immerse yourself in the installation Jeu Play or translated from French Play Play! Double fun. Literally. Become part of an orchestra, playing the work with interfaces such as sensors and joysticks to produce compositions of sound and light. The work can be experienced in two ways. You can to walk into the shipping container and interact with it as a performer. Alternatively you can get a group of people together and a designated conductor will led the composition, taking you on a journey through the piece.

Harry Silver of Interrupt Collective says it reflects the group's key interests while also remaining highly accessible. "We are really into interaction and design with new media and the concept of an orchestra is something that everyone understands.

"I hope people have fun with the installation but I'd also like people to be able to see the potential of what you can do with technology in this age we are living in. It's a pretty abstract idea but we have been able to say let's have an interactive joystick orchestra, hack it together and make it happen."

Wandering Creatures

When: Wednesday 13 Feb - Wednesday 20 March, 9:30am-5:30pm. Guided tours Wednesdays 6-7pm.

Where: Auckland Zoo, 99 Motions Rd, Western Springs.

In Wandering Creatures the audience has the opportunity to interact with fantastical digital creatures. First you download an application onto your smart phone then with the map provided you hunt out the digital animals lurking within the Auckland Zoo confines. "Some of them will be easy to find and others will hopefully be more difficult," creator Kim Newall says.

Audiences activate the creatures by jumping, walking or mimicking their actions, and the animals in turn respond to this attention. If you don't have a smart phone, not to worry. On Wednesday nights the zoo is open late and Kim will be giving guided tours to help find his creations. "It will be a chance for people to experience the zoo in a different way and in a different environment," he says.

Cusp

When: Fri 1 March, 5-9pm. Sat 2 March, 12-9pm. Sun 3 March 12-7pm.

Where: Silo Park

The idea of this installation is for people to form their own creative goals, creator Doug Makinson explains. It invites the audience to create patterns by exploring the motion of a series of pendulums. A luminescent trace records the patterns people make. The images left by the swinging motion gradually fades leaving a blank canvas for the next person to fill.

Doug says: "Hopefully people will experiment with it and then try different patterns. There are infinite possibilities depending on the speed you turn the turntable and the angle you swing the pendulum. I try to make the way it works transparent to help people see that you can produce quite complicated patterns with something that is actually quite simple."

Doug chose Silo Park as the location because the huge solid cylinders create the perfect contrast for the fleeting motion of the pendulums. "It's quite interesting to see how people use the pendulums because it's not always in ways which I'd predict," he says.

Snake The Planet

When: Every Friday & Saturday night from Feb 15 to March 9 between the hours of 8:30pm - 10:30pm.

Where: Various

Snake The Planet! by the collective MPU takes the classic video game Snake and adapts it to the urban canvas. When projected on to buildings, each level is generated individually depending on the selected facade. Auckland Central's windows, doorframes, pipes and signs will become boundaries and obstacles in the game.

Collaborator Lukasz Karluk explains why MPU chose to work with less than majestic architecture. "We felt that everybody was doing massive projection mapping for big festivals but the lane ways and backstreets were being forgotten. In our opinion they are just as interesting to work with as the bigger, more iconic buildings.

"We started working with scanning walls to look for features we could use for our interactive installations and eventually arrived at the idea of creating game levels that people could play on. Due to the geometric nature of the walls, Snake felt like a really fitting game to play."