Access All AreasAs tickets to 2015’s Glastonbury sell out in record time, Arcadia reflects on one of the highlights of last year, a dramatic – and sustainable – spider pod sculpture.
Tickets for 2015’s Glastonbury Festival sold out in a record-breaking 26 minutes this weekend. With Fleetwood Mac tipped by bookies to be one of the headliners.
For those who haven’t experienced Glastonbury this year, one of the most spectacular areas of Worthy Farm is hosted by Bristol-based firm Arcadia.
The spider-like pod can be seen and heard across the 900 acre site, which combines sculpture, engineering, music, pyrotechnics, acrobatics and lighting.
Material suppliers Metals4U recently interviewed company directors Pip Rush and Bertie Cole on the importance of sourcing the correct materials, the concept of the structure and the importance it holds to Glastonbury Festival hosting some of the world’s best DJ’s.
Made out of recycled military hardware including helicopter blades and jet engines, Arcadia implement the ‘Glastonbury ethos’ of highlighting the necessity of recycling with a creative twist.
“It’s a very creative chicken and egg scenario”, explains Rush. “The bits we find often steer the ideas we have. We built the spider legs in a few weeks, but it took a few years of shows to evolve into the moving creature it is now. We go on a ‘scrap tour’ once a year, which consists of a UK wide motorbike journey taking pictures of everything we find that looks useful. Then we send a lorry round to pick up the good bits at the end (hoping they haven’t reached the crusher yet). We use a bit of everything; plastics, wood and all sorts of metals.”
The project brings together a number of external collaborators including Sir Henry Hot (pyrotechnics) and BlinkinLab (UV video mapping). Whilst the live collaboration is seamless, detailed planning and organisation is imperative when approximately 70,000 people are in attendance.
Cole further explained the process: “Arcadia work with structural engineers to assess the type of metal the structural components are made from and then use computer modelling to calculate the structural strength of the components assembled into complete structures.”
The duo are continuing to create brand new ideas and 2015 is set to be an exciting year for the company.
Re-sale tickets for Glastonbury Festival will be made available in early Spring 2015.
More information on Arcadia can be found at: http://www.arcadiaspectacular.com/
Article written by Matthew Langham.