La Halle de la Machine - Toulouse

Posted on Sunday, October 23, 2022 by Seb
Album Toulouse Mr Penguin Tourism Hall De La Machine

La Halle de la Machine is a hall installed at Toulouse, in the ancient Aeropostale airport now reconverted as a fully reconstructed residential complex. This is one of the city workshops of La Compagnie de la Machine, a French performing arts company installed at Nantes making gigantic animated animal-like or mythic creatures machines for urban animations or live shows.

This Hall is what they call a “stable”, the machines are constructed in the workshop in Nantes and Toulouse’s Hall is an exhibit or their activities.

Three gigantic machines are present in Toulouse : the Minotaur, and two giant Spiders. When I was visiting the workshop, there was also in the background the body of Long Ma, a Chinese-inspired creature that was back from China to receive some maintenance job.

Visiting this Hall is like visiting a mad inventor’s lab, the amount of strange machines and device is just delirious.

The Minotaur, this is what they call an Urban Machine, made with a space on its back to receive people and take a tour in the neighborhood, mainly on the former aeropostale’s airplane landing runway.
One of the two spiders. I wasn’t very confortable in front of it… This is the one featured in the show set in China with Long Ma, the Dragon horse.
The front of the spider. It has a lot of special effects, like water spitting, smoke, moving eyes, etc.
In front of the Hall, there is this squared Carrousel made with animated insects. Sadly, it wasn’t running during my visit.
A selfie with Mr. Penguin ! I had to do it quick, it was starting raining…
When Long Ma came back from China, Toulouse organized an event with it.
This is Long Ma’s body. Long Ma has been ordered by a Chinese patron and has been constructed as a gift to celebrate the French-Chinese friendship. The Machine was supposed to be an urban attraction like the Minotaur or the Elephant at Nantes, but the Chinese city where it has been installed never used it, only during the inaugural show. Unused, Long Ma has returned to France for maintenance because of its inactivity.
An overview of the hall. In the back, you can see the second impressive spider. This one has been featured during a show in Nantes.
This is one of the shows hosted by the Toulouse’s Hall. Regularly, they organize Machine-theme dinners using a lot of very inspired devices and ways to serve the guests.
No, it’s not what you may think :p This is a part of the dinner activity, this hanging device is for the waiters.
Every decoration are made in wood and manually sculpted. The details level is awesome.

La Machine’s machines are not robots. They’re gigantic animatronics driven by several people. It’s fully mechanics and hydraulics. For example, the Spider required twelve people to be operated … Yes : Twelve !

There is one person per leg, plus other persons to drive the various animations and other body parts. Also, a person has to drive the vehicle of which the machine is constructed. Unlike the machine’s frame which is specific, the vehicle is just a small mobile crane-like vehicle on which the machine has been constructed. The hydraulics systems are made to be easily repaired and their design is simple enough to avoid too much costly maintenance.

Come here by night, with the right lighting, and you will assuredly scream like you’ve never had to.

A Machine orchestra, made with salvaged parts. The music is … Special.
This guitar wheel is playing a beautiful melody which is always the same, but as the rotation is slowing down, you think it’s different. I tried to record a video, but I’ve noticed far later that I’ve forgot to enable my camera’s mic…

This machine was made with car’s honks ! I think the noise must be terrible, they didn’t activated it.

Fortunately.

Some last overview.