Smooth As Silk

Left: A gigantic mechanical spider sits on the side of the Concourse tower in Liverpool city centre, north west England. The spider which was commissioned for the city`s European Capital of Culture celebrations will explore the city over the next few days. The show is the work of the French company La Machine, the spider weighs 37 tonnes and is 50 feet high, moves at 2 miles per hour and took one year to build.


Arachnophobics Anonymous better not meet in Liverpool!:

Liverpool woke this morning to an unusual sight - a giant mechanical spider dangling down a high rise office building, the latest and strangest happening in the city's European Capital of Culture.

The three storey arachnid on the side of Concourse House was created by a French arts collective called La Machine, and promises to be the centrepiece of an enormous piece of street theatre.

...La Machine , led by artistic director Francois Delaroziere, has an impressive record. It was responsible for The Sultan's Elephant, a spectacular five-day programme in central London that began on May 4 2006 with a four metre wood and steel rocket crashlanding in Waterloo Place, embedding itself several feet into the road surface.

This was merely the start - it was followed by a mechanical elephant 12 metres high that roamed the city streets, the largest actor in a fairy tale drama based around the elephant's relationship with a small girl who had appeared to a Sultan in a dream.

La Machine's Liverpool show is alleged to be a lot edgier and less whimsical than The Sultan's Elephant, but no less jaw-dropping. The spectacle has been 18 months in the planning and surrounded by absolute secrecy, even though the show's protagonists have been rehearsing in the city for a month.

Helen Marriage, the co-director of British-based creative outfit Artichoke productions, which has been overseeing the project, said that the logistics had been formidable.

"In a theatre you'd use the set to rehearse, but we can't - we have to practise off-site and in secret," she said in a newspaper interview. "The first time we'll get on set is in front of the whole city; hence the 18-month planning period. You really can't over plan something this big.

"We've measured every road, removed street lights and even dug up a roundabout. Now we just have to hope it's all been accurate, otherwise, well, it could all turn into a bit of an excitement.'