Flap to Freedom from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.
Battery hens flap to help battery hens in the Flap to Freedom installation that Chris O’Shea and Icodesign created for the V&A; Village Fete to support freedom for farmed chickens.
Contestants flap their arms and their chicken moves in sync. Quickest flapper wins the highest place on the pecking order. More over at the Icodesign site.
There are also Flickr sets showing the build process and the chickens in action.
Chris has also posted more details about the Flap to Freedom project as well as a bit of technical how-it-was-done.
For someone like me who is always interested in getting people to act playfully (dare I say stupidly) via interactivity, this is pretty hard to beat. They’re so into the activity, they take the technical ‘magic’ for granted, which is how it should be. I especially like the way the music eggs them on (sorry).
Bet you that music sticks in your head for the rest of the day too.
(NOTE/UPDATE: I thought I’d posted this whole thing before, but it was on draft for some reason, so I’ve combined the two posts).