PacManchester! Hazard MMX reprogrammes the city centre.

As Manchester’s one-day festival of live art and gaming looms, Neil McQuillian dusts off his kazoo and gets ready to be flashmobbed

If your idea of doing something interesting in the city this summer involves a six-pack and a frisbee then it’s perhaps time you tried something new – and, with programme that promises to transform Manchester into an arena of uncanniness, the Hazard MMX festival may be just the ticket.

With two previous outings in 2007 and 2008, the producers of the now-biennial festival – a 24-hour mix of live art, theatre and site-specific (or pervasive) gaming – have lofty ambitions. ‘I don’t talk to strangers easily, but in a game, given a set of rules, you act differently and can end up having an experience that’s magical,’ says Tricia Coleman of Larkin’ About, the street theatre company contributing ‘four games and a flashmob’ to the event. Hazard itself features around 25 separate events, from Bees!, a live pollen-hunting quest where players roam through the city using nothing more hi-tech than a kazoo, to Walking (s)Miles, where participants text back to base every time they ‘catch’ a smile. The Forest Front of Mancunia, meanwhile, is a family-friendly quest to find a lost animal that, according to Coleman, ‘encourages people to use the green spaces in the city centre’.

Hazard builds on a growing trend for large-scale pervasive gaming that began life in New York – according to Holly Gramazio of gaming organisation Hide & Seek, the city that never sleeps hosted Come Out & Play in 2006, the world’s first such live gaming event started by ‘students coming out of a games design course’. A natural extension of video gaming, then, this weekend’s Hazard festival seamlessly combines real-time, real-life play with social and digital media – The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You, for example, requires would-be flashmobbers to download an MP3 24 hours before the festival an then wait for instructions.

Interestingly, Hazard is not all about geeks and gadgets. It has its roots in greenroom’s emergency project, which Tricia Coleman describes as a platform ‘for emerging artists to show 20-minute pieces of art – performance, dance, anything really.’ The programme looks to be entertaining if nothing else: the crushing of a woman by a knitted boulder, synchronized swimmers agitating for audience participation, one hundred ‘Dorothys’ marching in unison and a Bisto-scented scratch ’n’ sniff cinema all feature. Coleman hopes that those who dip their toe into this weekend’s events might also come back to greenroom later in the year. ‘It’s a way of softly telling people that what happens at greenroom isn’t scary, that it can be playful,’ she says.

While for some Hazard may sound like perfect hell, others may just be inspired to do more with their weekend than just sleep, drink and eat – and might even return to Hazard in two years’ time with a game, flashmob or performance of their own. Let the games commence…

Hazard MMX, greenroom and across the city centre, Saturday 17 July, 12-5pm. Free. Images courtesy Hazard, Andrew K. Moss and Andrew R Darbyshire (2007 & 2008).

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