Adelaide Flash Mob

Thanks to all those who made it out to AFM#15; ‘It Reads Better Upside Down’.  We were lucky enough to get great weather for this friday evening event and a rough estimate puts the numbers at around 80-100 making it our biggest flashmob to date.  If you didn’t make it out to this flashmob but are curious about the event, I suggest you check out the event instructions to find out what we did.

We will have a full event report and video up soon.  In the meantime we’d love to get your comments and feedback on how the event went.  Simply post them in the comments below.

We’d especially like to know:

1. Any funny reactions you saw or got from passers by, employees or other non-mobbers
2. Which mob activity you like the best and why
3. Any activity/s you didn’t like and/or ways they could’ve been improved
4. Any ideas for future flashmobs and events

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Event Details

Date: Friday, 18 September 2009
Time: 6pm – 7pm
Location: Rundle Mall, Adelaide CBD

Instructions

For this event we will be doing 4 activities along Rundle Mall.

Mob #1 ?????? ????? ???? : By 6pm (1800) you should be browsing the books, dvds and magazines in Borders (next to the malls balls) upside down. Each product that you are looking at should be physically taken off the shelf and held upside down. This will be a very subtle mob which many people won’t notice. But those who do will be WTF confused. When your watch/phone strikes 6:13pm, immediately put the product you are holding back, put your hands over your ears and quickly and quietly head for the door.

Mob#2: As you exit borders form a large circle around the malls balls so that you are around 10 m from it. Look out for other mobbers and try and fill the gaps to make it more or less a complete circle. Strike up a conversation with the mobber next to you and slowly raise the noise level. As the general noise level gets louder, slowly move forward, closing the circle around the balls but don’t go closer than 4 m. Once the noise level gets high enough a countdown will start… 20,19,18,17 etc… join in and make it really loud… 5,4,3,2,1… finish the countdown at 1 (one), INSTEAD of saying 0 (zero), quickly and silently disperse in different directions.

Mob #3: Start walking west (towards king william) along the mall, keeping to the left hand side. As you pass Harris Scarfe’s, crouch down and tie (pretend to tie) your shoe, get back up and contine walking. Walk 20 m or so past the end of Harris Scarfe then cross over to the opposite side of the mall, loop around and walk past Harris Scarfe’s again with another stop and shoe tie somewhere in front of the store. Repeat 3 more times (5 in total). Try and mix up the spot where you do your shoe tie on each loop and try not to get in the way of the doors too much. After you have finished your 5th pass, casually walk off towards the Myer Centre.

Mob#4: If your birthday is in an odd month (Jan, Mar, May etc) find a spot in the mall outside the Myer Centre and stand with both hands on your head. You don’t need to be frozen, just standing in the one spot with your hands on your head. Those of you who have your birthday in an even month (Feb, April, June etc) stand around watching, move in amongst those who are standing still as though they are exhibits in an art gallery. Once you have had a good look around, approach someone who still has both hands on their head and put them into another pose by physically arranging their arms and giving them quiet instructions. Once you are happy with the new pose, walk off. Those who are now posing; again you don’t need to be frozen, just generally still and holding your pose. Count to 100 and then casually walk off. Hopefully the split will be roughly even but if not, just accomodate by either setting the pose for more than one person or skip setting someone’s pose if no one is left.

The event ends here. However, if you want to meet up with other mobbers and discuss the event, head into the City Cross food court. Scratch all over as if you have fleas as you walk around the food court to identify yourself as a mobber. Find others doing likewise and gather together and find a place to sit.

Theres quite a lot to remember here so you might want to copy the instructions into a word document and print them out for your reference.

If you can’t make it to this event then please give us a hand and invite any friends who you think might be interested so we can get the numbers to make the mob a success.

For this event, we did four mob activities along Rundle Mall on Saturday August 1st 2009.

We did things a bit differently by giving out the instructions before the event while usually mobbers don’t get them until they show up on the day and receive a sheet of papper with the details. It seemed to work in getting more people out as this was our biggest flashmob event so far with around 50 people.

Check out the instructions for the event including details of each activity.  Watch the video below and read the comments from event participants.  Add your own comments.

Funny Video Moments

3:20- Guy in white jumper and blonde girl in pink top arrive after Chibo Cheers has finished and stand around waiting for something to happen…

3:55- Guy in black jumper with a coke walks by with a smile on his face

4:02- Two girls in red, apparently they weren’t part of the mob and just decided to join in.  At the end they said “why did we just do that?”

4:12- Tall, thin guy with light coloured clothing standing to the left of the girl with the camera, looking around interested

4:34- Girl in denim jacket and girl in brown jacket enter from the right and look on shocked.  They make another appearance at 4:55 (behind the pole) and are left standing confused once everyone disperses

Long time mobbers would recognise that 3/4 of the mobs we did were ones we’d done in the past so we had a good feeling that they would work.  The Line was no exception.  There’s something about a long line of people that just turns heads, and when you add that they guy at the front is holding a sign saying “please line up here” but with no explanation of why, people must stare while their minds search for an explanation.

Everyone seems to be in agreement that Chibo Cheers was the best activity and the most fun to participate in.  As expected, the cheering and clapping quickly brought a crowd of onlookers.  It’s hard to say whether they were more confused by the subject of our commotion or the speed of our arrival and departure.

Our last two activities were more subtle both visually and audibly.  Some people in their own little worlds just walked on by without even noticing, those more observant stopped, realising that something wasn’t quite right.  I think Boing Boing would’ve been better if we had people look in different directions and stand not so much in a circle formation. Murmer worked pretty well, might have perhaps been better if we’d spread out a bit more.

To end the event, those who wanted to headed into City Cross for some food and a chat.  In order to identify themselves as mobbers they were instructed to put their left hand on their head and walk around until they met up with others doing likewise.  This wasn’t captured on the video but it was pretty funny and certainly confused the security guard on duty.

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We love hearing about funny bystander reactions so if you can remember any or notice any good ones in the video, please put them in the comments.  Here’s some other questions we’d like to get your answers to.

1. Which of the four activities did you think worked the best?
2. Do you think the fact that we gave out the instructions before the event made it better or worse?
3. Do you have any ideas for future events?
4. Any other comments or suggestions?

Our last flashmob event was all the way back at the end of 2008 so it was good to get back in the hot seat.  The weather looked a bit dicey for a while but turned out great for the duration of the event even though it managed to run an hour overtime.  We were a little light on numbers at the meeting place so I made a last ditch attempt to recruit some more mobbers by handing out instructions in the mall and directing them to our first activity, “Thumbwar Championships.”  I managed to get another 5 or so people which swelled by an additional 4 or 5 before the event’s end.

For this event we also had two uni students, Jay Anderson and Andro Malapira, filming for a doco project for their uni course.  The finished product is below.

(also available on youtube)

Here’s a basic rundown of the four activities from this event.  If you participated then please leave your thoughts and comments about the event in the comments below.  We should have a video coming shortly as well.

Thumbwar Championships

“Sign Up” at the malls balls meeting point and pair off for round one of the thumbwar championships. “1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thumbwar,” and the battles begin.  At the end of the round the losers are eliminated and the winners progress to round two.  This continues until we have a Thumbwar Champion.

Boing, Boing

Mobber 1 starts bobbing up and down and saying “boing, boing, boing… etc” reasonably loudly.  Other mobbers gradually join in.  We started this behind the busking magician who’s often in the mall and he felt the need to make a number of comments as he thought we were stealing his show.

Simon Does Loop

Everybody walks a looping route from the mall and through the Myer Centre that includes… Check watch, walk towards Myer, tie shoe, go down escaltor, walk left, fake trip, go up escalator, go back out into the mall.  Repeat the loop 5 times over, keeping your head in your newspaper all the time through.

We only managed 2.5 times through the loop before a security gaurd kicked us out… apparently reading the newspaper is against their conditions of entry.

Mouse honeydripper movie

Find a seat in the City Cross food court, near the Subway and Hungry Jacks.  As mobber in mouse costume approaches shout out “Mouse!” and jump up on chairs, searching the floor.  Mouse will walk through the food court and out the door into Grenfell Street.  Once he is gone, sit back down and go about your business.

The female security guard chased down the mouse and stopped him just before he did his walk through the foodcourt.  She didn’t want to chuck him out, but ask for a photograph with him.  Unfortunately that put her right there for when we all shouted out and we were quickly asked to leave.