Those walking down Woolwich's main drag keep turning their heads and looking puzzled. Something is buzzing in their ears. If they looked up, they would notice that it is the saggy, lantern-like structures in the trees and spiky silver balls emitting these strange sounds. It is as if the trees have been colonised by giant insects.
This is Gather, an installation created by Thor McIntyre-Burnie and Toby Jarvis, and one of the first projects supported by the new British street-arts consortium, Without Walls. Inspired by sounds collected in the mountains above Kyoto, it takes a familiar space and renders it strange and exotic.
Greenwich and Docklands festival is all about disrupting the spectacle of everyday life and finding new ways to use public spaces. At Woolwich on Thursday night, the shopping precinct, which after 6pm would normally have been a concrete desert, was transformed into something otherworldly. In Absolute Pearl, the stationary stilt artists of Australian company Strange Fruit swayed in the breeze like corn stalks and gradually whipped themselves into a frenzy. Paper Men, looking like fearsome Japanese warriors, brought out the world's largest toilet roll and proceeded to engage in a strange ritual, and Vernisseurs were artistic litter louts, transforming Beresford Square into a sea of ribbons.
As the sun set, Close Act's ghostly stilt-walkers with their huge gossamer wings appeared in a puff of smoke. "The fairies have come," said a child in wonder. "They're not fairies," declared her brother confidently, "They're aliens." Tomorrow, it will be shopping as usual.
· Gather will be at Hat Fair, Winchester, Thursday to Sunday. Details: 01962 849841.
