Fly By Night is an immersive experience happening at the New Hamer Hall (Melbourne Arts Centre).  Each visitor has their own individual unique experience which combines multimedia and live performance in a curious, bizarre and intriguing way.

When: 25-26 July 2015 (and hopefully future installations)

Where:  Hamer Hall (just inside the main entrance), St Kilda Road MELBOURNE

Cost:  FREE but completely booked out (I was advised tho that if you are coming into the city and want to try your luck – if someone hasn’t turned up for their allocated session drop in will be welcome to fill it).

Review

This experience definitely ventures into the territory of arty-farty as it’s kinda kooky and as Charlie (7) said “totally weird”.  But that said we were curious to see what happened next and there was lots of exploring and quite a few laughs along the way.

The experience takes about 35 minutes plus a 5 minute brief and set up time at the beginning.  Adults you will be required to leave your own iPhone behind (I guess as a kind of guarantee that you’ll return the Arts Centre’s iPhones at the end!).

If you visit with more than one child to adult ratio (like we did) be sure to ask that you can all go together… being among the very first to try this out we had no idea what to expect or what would literally be around the next corner.  Quite early in the experience you are required to leave the building and catch a lift – if you are doing this alone it can be very confronting for a young child… Immi was set up to go on her own but when she was required to leave the building she hesitated – and the idea of getting in the lift alone completely freaked her out (which was totally acceptable as I wouldn’t normally encourage her to catch a lift alone – especially in such a public space).

Charlie and I were sharing our iPhone device so Immi hung back and joined us – but her tour was then out of synch so she lost interest (and was still a bit put out about her failed lift ride).  Charlie on the other hand embraced the experience – he laughed on a number of occasions, enjoyed working out where we had to go next and also enjoyed using the iPhone to explore the word inside the screen version.

Quite simply Fly By Night takes you on a curious tour of Hamer Hall (well really its corridors, stairwells and some bits outside).  Within the screen there are performances happening and then within the “real life” space there are either props linking to the on screen performances or actual performers moving about.  It’s quite subtle in a few spots – but the iPhone and real life combined mean that there is always something happening.. plus you’re walking half the time and trying to figure out where to go next (as you are following a designed trail, for which there is no map, just clues).

More information, click here.