Underbelly Public Arts Lab + Festival 2007 - CarriageWorks, Sydney
figureight was brought on board for the mammoth task of technical management for 100+ artists who were involved with Underbelly. Being the first year, there were many unknowns. Plans changed, projects were added at the last minute, tech sheets would be thrown out and re-written on the fly. We needed to have the flexibility to evolve with the beast and we came through.
The epic foyer - which can be cavernous and cold - was bustling
Our project manager, Dylan Prins, was appointed Technical Manager by the Underbelly team. We also provided technicians to operate the spaces during the arts lab period (music rehearsals, projectors etc). This was a 10 day workshop period where all the artists would prepare their performances and construct their artworks in the space itself, with the public freely observing the whole process.
The festival day was culmination of ten days of venue transformation. For twelve hours all of CarriageWorks was alive, with several groups doing the final performances which they had developed.
The epic foyer - which can be cavernous and cold - was bustling with aerial artists, installation pieces, roving performers, and lots of colour and movement, which kept the keen audience on their feet and constantly exploring.
The big spectacle was held in the enormous Bay 17 room. Production was handled by figureight, as can be seen in the video link at the bottom of this page. We also co-produced the line up with the festival organisers. In true Underbelly style, the room became an immersing audio visual experience, complete with aerial ribbon artists, trapeze, and live vision mixing from the leading vision artists in Sydney.
Technicians from figureight also kept the other main performance room, Bay 20, on its tight schedule. This room featured sit-down performances from Entropic, Aural Adventures, Pig Island, Power Media Industries and more. They incorporated live music and theatrical performance, visuals, audience interaction and even live movie soundtracks.
We have been approached to take on an even larger role in this year's Underbelly. It is evolving into a 3-day festival, taking over some of the surrounding areas in Redfern, as well as keeping the arts lab build up to the festival weekend.
An Underbelly '07 video blog can be found here.
