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Air Camp :: details, tech specs, collaterals, and other info
Details
Workshop duration, capacity, age range, staff, exhibition set-up
- Workshop Duration – Two days of 6 hours (includes breaks)
- Capacity – 15 children
(Multiple workshops can be conducted within a single season, culminating in a unified exhibition that hosts all participating children in scheduled sessions). - Age – 9 to 12
- Staff – 4 + FoH
If needed to fit within the budget, the presenter can provide up to three
staff members. Non-Memetica staff must undergo a one-hour briefing and
possess basic skills in using a sewing machine. - Exhibition
30 to 40 minutes each session (see Exhibition/performance link below for details)
- Duration – 2 hours
- Capacity – 15 children
(Multiple workshops can be conducted within a single season, culminating in a unified exhibition that hosts all participating children in scheduled sessions). - Age – 9 to 12
- Staff – 4 + FoH
If needed to fit within the budget, the presenter can provide up to three staff members. Non-Memetica staff must undergo a one-hour briefing and possess basic skills in using a sewing machine. - Exhibition
30 to 40 minutes each session (see Exhibition/performance link below for details)
- Duration – 40 minutes to 6 hours
The performative exhibition component of Air Camp adapts to the format of the leading workshop. Each exhibition/performance accommodates a maximum of 15 tents and their respective ‘caretakers’. Multiple sessions and groups of children can participate within the same day. Depending on workshop attendance, exhibitions may feature different children, repeat the same ones, or combine both approaches.
- Minimum floor size
150 square meter (The number of tents can be reduced to fit smaller areas) - Power socket
240 Volt
These specs apply to both Air Camp and Air Camp Mini
The sculptures, designed to be self-illuminating like lanterns, are versatile in their installation, functioning effectively in both dark and well-lit environments, though they create an ideal atmosphere in darkness or semidarkness.
Collaterals
Marketing’s copy samples & Interview about Air Camp
Come and sit in the circle inside the camp. Think of an issue you care about. Choose inflatable sculptures to represent it. Mount them on your tent, disappear into it… and it’s time to turn your mic on!
Engage in meaningful conversations with the public, and let the adults discover your perspective and understand what is important to you.
As visitors walk through the camp of tents with magically lit up ideas on them, they can literally see what your thoughts are. Discuss things you care most about with the inquisitive audience.
They can’t see you, but they sure can hear!
Imagine a camp of inflatable tents with kids’ ideas sprouting out of them as lit up sculptures. Unseen from inside the tent children’s voices are amplified as they let us know what they care about the most in the world and why.
Walk through the camp of tents with magically lit up ideas and engage in meaningful conversations with the children and discover their perspectives – they might even change yours!
Click on the image to enlarge
:: AIR CAMP ::
An other-worldly installation for conversation between adults and children.
A circle of colourful interconnected tents sits in a large open space. Each tent is filled with air and has a strange inflatable message sculpture sprouting from its roof, like placards, conversation starters. You are invited into the otherworldly inner circle and, if you are a child, your job is to decide on a subject you care about, choose a message sculpture to represent it, zip the sculpture onto a tent of your choice, watch it inflate, and then crawl inside. If you are on the outside, your job is to be the ‘conversationalist’ – to talk to the tents, ask questions and begin a dialogue of any length. The child inside has a microphone and a whole lot of uninhibited stuff to say.
Air Camp is a new way to create a public ‘conversation circle’ where children are unseen and empowered to speak their mind to strangers from the comfort of their own tent. As visitors walk through the camp of tents, with their magically lit-up ideas attached, they can literally see what kids’ thought are. The project is both installation and live workshop designed for festivals, large gallery foyers and public spaces.
Memetica’s engagement activities for children
Air Play brings the relatively simple process of making inflatables to children, along with various other areas of creative exploration including writing text onto inflatable architecture, understanding basic physics and playfully engaging with simple and safe 12 volts circuitry to operate and test their creations
Children and their parents or guardians are invited to bring any surplus of unused plastic bags they might have in their home and transform them in amusing sculptures.
The Reeflings Explorations provide an exciting and exhilarating experience for children aged 9 to 12. These lightweight, full-body puppets are crafted from materials recycled from discarded tents and are inflatable.
The Reeflings’ Explorations! workshop offers children aged 9 to 12 to join a playful one-hour workshop, where they can immerse themselves in the fantasy world of the Reeflings. During this session, kids will have the chance to explore the magic of wearing the costumes, delve into the captivating stories and characters of the Reeflings, and gain confidence in performing for an audience. It’s a wonderful opportunity for young minds to step into a fantastical narrative and bring it to life.
After an engaging training and rehearsal, the children are ready to perform among the audience, who always react with amazement and joy to these colorful, fun, curious, and investigative creatures.
Along with the thrill of interacting with the crowd anonymously, performing with the Reeflings instills confidence, a sense of pride, and a responsibility to act as a team in the children.
Memetica has extensive and international expertise in delivering captivating roving shows featuring giant puppets, designed to entertain and astonish audiences of diverse cultures. It also specializes in community-based workshops, offering immersive experiences for all generations or specifically tailored for children, that foster their creative and performative abilities.
The impact of the Memetica’s experience extends beyond the public presentation of the artwork created during the workshops, and leaves a lasting social and cultural resonance within the community.
The memetic’s process of culture making through replication, inheritance, and variation, inspires Memetica accessible approach to art for all. Memetica’s community projects actively promote and encourage spontaneity, even among those unfamiliar with art production, facilitatiing intentional expressivity reagrdless of levels of experience in creating. Through this approach, the ordinary is transformed into evocative and impactful artwork.
:: Giant puppets Community Workshops ::
:: The Naming
Memetica’s cultural intervention by means of giant puppetry is epitomized by The Naming, a collaboration with Australian First Nation Elder Laurie Padmore of the Dulgubarra Ydinji clan. This project seamlessly blends visually striking performance, linguistic proficiency, and cultural wisdom.
The Naming Project has effectively raised awareness about traditional culture and its importance to Yungaburra and beyond. This demonstrates how large-scale spectacles with meaningful content can attract significant attention through the playful, non-confrontational presence of giants. In this instance, the project has garnered national attention through television broadcasting.
:: Deadly Totems
The following video clip illustrates the process of Memetica’s community-based workshops. Deadly Totems has been realized in collaboration with the Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association in Hastings, Victoria. The show portrays the inspiring tale of how the association rescued their land from industrial destruction, transforming it into a revitalized natural area that now thrives with native plants and animals.
:: Street Roving and Performance Training ::
Memetica’s roving street performances bring surrealism and unexpected laughter to outdoor events, entertaining and amazing people of all ages. With mischievous Wild Birds and snooping Street Skeeters, these performances offer a delightful experience. Festivals and events can also opt for training workshops, providing a life-changing opportunity for their audience and community. Memetica can conduct training sessions for individuals selected by the festival, teaching them how to operate its giant creatures. These trainees will then enjoy the thrilling experience to perform in roving gigs at the festival.
Such experience is also available for manual wheelchair users with the uniquely designed Street Skeeters, and for children 9yo+ with the inflatable puppet Reeflings.
:: Wild Birds
:: Street Skeeters
Created in collaboration with Wheelchair Rugby Paralympic Champion Matt Lewis, the Street Skeeters have been designed for full and comfortable access for manual wheelchair user. The Skeeters are also available for the training and perform session with community members.
Find out more about Street Skeeters
:: The Reeflings
The Reeflings emerge as a mutated species, originating from reefs across the world’s oceans. Among them are those who are newly acquainted with land, while others are born here, carrying on their legacy in the wake of the reefs’ decline. These resilient creatures embody optimism as they navigate a life devoid of a familiar home or seek refuge from their original habitats. Their ultimate quest is to find a place to call home, establish thriving communities, and coexist harmoniously with other living organisms. Their narrative weaves a tale of escape, survival, arrival, transformation, joy, hope, and the remarkable ability to adapt to new environments.
:: The Reeflings Explorations!
Children can now enjoy the excitement of performing in public spaces with the Reeflings puppets. Under Memetica’s guidance, they can train for one hour, don the costumes, and mingle among the festival crowd, bringing joy to the the onlooking audience and more importantly to the young first time performers of giant puppets.
Age 9-12 years old
:: SCRAPS – Art Making with a Sprinkle of Culture
Scraps is a playful take on art-making workshops with a sprinkle of language trimmings on top.
You will create mesmerizing puppet costumes, with a little cultural twist…
Participants to Scraps will create inflatable costume puppets from salvaged materials.
The unique twist: they do so under the guidance of mother toungue Italian (and English) speaking artists and facilitators, who will mostly use Italian instruction only! Are you game?
:: Participatory Inflatable Installations ::
Participatory
:: Lac Long Quan
:: Tendon
An abstract installation that transformed the iconic Edinburgh Garden Rotunda into an immersive, kaleidoscopic experience. Visitors can enter the installation and experience it from within.
The Tendon is made with camping tent discarded at music festival and collected by Daniele to repurpose them into art projects.
:: The Elders of Woodfordia
The Elders are a group of 12 characters who roam the streets of Woodford Folk Festival each year. They don’t belong to any specific ethnicity, culture, or gender; instead, they embody the archetypal figure of elders—a universal anthropological and social construct found in most pre-modern societies and cultures.
The Elders mingle with the crowd, enjoying shows and hanging around like anyone’s grandparents might. However, at certain moments, they step into their role as keepers of ancient knowledge and arcane mysteries, performing rituals that no one in the audience fully understands but can trust are for the benefit of the temporary community gathered for the week-long festival.