Along Came One Really Big Spider

To borrow a phrase from Captain Jack Sparrow... "Hello, Beastie."

There was a big event here on the last weekend of July called La Machine. Today I'm kicking off a series looking at it in detail, and starting with the antagonist of the event. La Machine is a company from France that specializes in urban theatre, with giant machine animals moving through the streets and interacting with the environment itself while telling a story- of a dragon horse whose wings and temple have been stolen by a spider. Two machines stalked the streets of Ottawa that weekend, in a variety of settings in a story called The Spirit Of The Dragon Horse: The Stolen Wings. Both machines featured a team of operators and musicians during walkabouts, and during the lead-up to walkabouts and confrontations, it was a delight to see the crowd applauding the arrival of those teams. I caught both machines in several locations over the weekend, which opened up with one event I missed- the giant spider Kumo descending Notre Dame Basilica. Here, on the second day of the event, a Friday, I found Kumo in a restful state outside the Ottawa Convention Center. This was before a big confrontation with the protagonist, who was at that time at rest over at City Hall. That confrontation took place at the Laurier Bridge south of here.

The following morning, Kumo was at rest again in the Byward Market, where many people were taking a chance to have a look at her. The numbers: at rest like this, she's 5.7 metres high, 6 metres wide; when fully stretched, she can span twenty metres. Her opponent was a street away at this time, also at rest. We'll have a look at him tomorrow.