Shop­pers in the mall stop, look up and stare. There’s con­fu­sion, sur­prise and delight. They watch them­selves on the big screen. Sud­denly, an enorm­ous hand darts out and squashes a fel­low shop­per down to half their size. It’s the same old street, but today, not as they know it.

Hand From Above is a unique piece of inter­act­ive pub­lic art that, for a few minutes at least, makes you sus­pend disbelief.

Reac­tions to Hand From Above by Chris O’Shea | Image by Pixelsumo on Flickr

“I really enjoyed watch­ing ‘Land of the Giants’ on TV as a child,” artist Chris O’Shea explains, “I would day­dream about run­ning around as a tiny per­son, climb­ing over things and avoid­ing being squashed by big people… I was inter­ested in how I could get this feel­ing of being a small per­son in a giants’ world on to a big screen.”

Through Hand From Above, O’Shea turned a pub­lic plaza in Liv­er­pool into a stage where any­thing can hap­pen, where the magic and mis­chief of myths and legends is trans­posed into the most ped­es­trian of spaces. The BBC Big Screen Liv­er­pool became a win­dow on an altern­ate reality.

“The space is in the city centre, between busy shops. People meet their friends, eat their sand­wiches and carry their shop­ping bags to get home,” O’Shea says.

The big hand in Hand From Above seems to inter­vene whenever it pleases, pick­ing up the view­ers like tiny toys, tick­ling them around or squash­ing them. O’Shea wanted the work to encour­age people to “ques­tion [their] nor­mal routine”, and it does that and more. The work turns view­ers into par­ti­cipants and adds an unfor­get­table layer of memory to their exper­i­ences of an ordin­ary space.

Hand From Above by Chris O’Shea | Image by Pixelsumo on Flickr

“Every­one reacted in a very play­ful way, as if the hand was up to cheeky mis­chief,” O’Shea says. “Some people tried to run away from the hand, some people shake their bot­tom at it etc. One eld­erly lady said: “I haven’t had a man’s hand all over me like that in years!”

Reac­tions to Hand From Above by Chris O’Shea | Image by Pixelsumo on Flickr

View­ing reac­tions to the work [see video below] you notice the laughter, glee and spon­tan­eous reac­tions to the work are com­mon to young and old. Some people like being noticed, some run away, oth­ers like per­form­ing. People seem to delight in hav­ing this unex­pec­ted oppor­tun­ity to joke, play and chat to the oth­ers shar­ing the moment.

Is cre­at­ing a sense of won­der import­ant in our pub­lic spaces?

“Yes def­in­itely, as within many cul­tures we are too busy with daily life to enjoy it. Someone has to buy the gro­cer­ies, pick up the kids, fix the car, go to work to pay the bills. It’s a bor­ing cycle. By adding moments of pause and play­ful­ness in a pub­lic space it gives us a short break from this and hope­fully makes us think dif­fer­ently or use our ima­gin­a­tions,” O’Shea says.

Presen­ted as part of Aban­don Nor­mal Devices, a media arts fest­ival, Hand From Above takes O’Shea inter­act­ive work to an epic scale and to an audi­ence that aren’t expect­ing it.

“Most of the time you have to go to a museum, gal­lery or cul­tural event to see my work. What attracts me to these screens is that you reach an audi­ence that wouldn’t neces­sar­ily go into a gallery.”

We don’t want to spoil the sur­prise for you, but Hand From Above will tour to other BBC Big Screens around the UK over the next twelve months, so you’ve still got a chance to be tickled by a giant. Keep look­ing up.

Hand from Above from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

Chris O’Shea shared his work with us, now we’d like to hear from you. Would you be con­fron­ted or charmed if Hand From Above singled you out for mis­chief? Are there any big screens you’d like to claim for art in your city? Have you exper­i­enced any inter­act­ive work that excited a reac­tion from you? Or have you cre­ated work that engages with people in unex­pec­ted ways?