TED Talks Daily
The fire-breathing dragon-horse sparking wonder in a city near you | Frédette Lampre
01 Jul 2025
How does a city change when its art doesn’t hang on museum walls but instead roams the streets? Artist Frédette Lampre of the production company La Machine shares how their towering, handcrafted mechanical creations transform urban spaces into living theaters, creating unforgettable experiences that reconnect people with their cities and each other.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. The most influential puppets in my life are actually Muppets, you know, from Sesame Street or Kermit and Miss Piggy and their whole Jim Henson puppet universe. They evoke all kinds of feelings and nostalgia, childhood.
In this talk, artist and designer Fredette Lamp, who is part of the French street theater collective La Machine, reflects on what it means to create and build giant moving machines, from fire-breathing sea dragons to slumbering minotaurs, and why the kind of puppets she makes go way beyond entertainment. They can help reshape how people see their cities and one another.
Imagine one day you're out for a walk in a city you live or you visit, and suddenly you came face to face with a giant minotaur. He's half male, half bull. His skin is made of wood. He's walking, galloping, rearing up. He opens and closes his blue eyes. He breathes, he cries, he growls. His arms can fend off traffic lights.
And now he's asleep in front of the city hall, and people, on their way to work, hear the creature snoring. amazing, as tall as buildings. The city is a stage for him, and people are immersed in his world. Thirty years ago, my colleague, François de La Rozière, a designer, art performer, founded La Machine Company. His aim? To create large theater experiences in cities, how?
With huge animated machines. Since then, François's extraordinary machines appeared in streets, boulevards, avenues, all over the world. These machines have no practical function at all. They tell stories for cities and their citizens, and they bring all communities together to create perhaps a new common ground. In 2016, the French port of Calais commissioned us a permanent art project.
Two years later, the sea dragon appeared on the beach. He has two giant red rings and a long blue tail. And he started his delightful promenade around the historic streets of Calais. spitting fire, smoke coming out of his body. The sea dragon is now the new image of the city. I could say that he belongs to the city, and he's loved by everyone. Thank you.
La Machine is based in Nantes, a French city on the Atlantic coast of France, and our workshop is in a former shipyard, where we now build the great elephant, the giant spider, the dragon horse, the minotaur, the sea dragon and others. It's a permanent beehive with over 100 different trades and crafts involved.
In our staff, we have welders, musicians, mechanics, comedians, sculptors, engineers, roboticists and so on. Perhaps you would like to know how we make it. First, a drawing, then a model. The model is scanned to generate a digital wireframe. Then, we made woodland shells for the skin of the animal,
a metal structure for the skeleton, including hydraulic and electrical systems to bring the machine to life. Then the construction can begin. The carpenters lead the way, and other trades follow on. It takes around two years from the design to the completion. And then we are ready to operate a machine. An average of 18 operators drive the machine with joystick and exoskeletons.
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