Big toy robots, floating pixels and wall-climbing musical notes for a children's music event
Børneskoven ["Children's Forest"] is a project brought to life by cultural entrepreneur
David Nejrup, with the aim of gathering families from the entire
municipality of Albertslund, West Copenhagen, for a day of live music and fun experiences.
Forbrændingen, a retired power station made venue, is host to Børneskoven.
The entire venue gets a themed makeover each year for this event only;
In 2017, the theme was "electricity".
I based my designs on the fantastic Space Age of the 1950’s and early 60’s,
a period where electricity was very much commonplace, but still a
topic of great wonder and mystery.
Bright colors, clunky computers and crazy robot designs shapes this era.
And so, I decided to build a robot as the centerpiece of the stage.
Complete with claw hands and tube arms, the "Jazzbot" was present for
every concert during the day, as the sidekick to David the host.
A screen serving as the eyes and mouth allowed me to control the expression
of the robot with a small controller. This proved to be great fun, interacting
with the host David and the bands during their performance.
I built a large wall of "pixels" from aluminum frames suspeded from the ceiling, to create a more cosy and enclosed space between the entrance and the main floor. The pixels would play small clips from various recordings of science experiments, tech from the 50's, early computer graphics and flashing buttons to create ambiance between acts.
A late but very important addition was the climbing notes projected onto the climbing wall. I wrote a small piece of software which generated musical notes that would "climb" the wall. As they came closer to the top, they would lose their grip and fall tumbling to the ground, to be replaced by new ones.
