The world’s largest whoopee cushion, carrot whistles, watermelon drums and a technological makeover for pop star wannabes are a few of the highlights of the FREE Street Vibe Festival of Sound, 11:30am – 6:00pm, Saturday 14 June at The Scoop, More London – outside City Hall on the South Bank.

Street Vibe is a major free one-off event for all ages that explores the weird and wonderful role of science and engineering in making music and sound. Extraordinary live performances in The Scoop and creative workshops in surrounding marquees invite us to tune our bodies; turn our silhouettes into sounds; slice, dice and DJ sounds in the Strangeloop lab; and take part in a live orchestral performance using our bodies as instruments. A big screen will broadcast visual projections of the sounds and live events including:

> World Record Attempt – Street Vibe’s attempt to break the world record for the largest whoopee cushion ever made. A whopping three metres in size, it will beat the current record by over a metre. Brave volunteers will be invited to sit on the enormous ‘musical’ cushion to demonstrate just how wind instruments really work. The record attempt will be at 1420hrs.

> Trevor and Steve: Beautiful Music Horrible Sounds – how performers get the X factor. Girl-boy duo Phluffy Nice and the not so harmonious Grim Reaper get a much-needed makeover to explore whether technology really does have the potential to make or break their bid for fame and fortune.

> Get musical with the grow-your-own orchestra – Whether it’s a marrow-harp or coconut maracas, it’s yours to make and play in the Sound Factory, a workshop where just about anything can become a musical instrument.

> Squid Soup – Freq2 – What you see is what you hear when Freq takes the outline of our silhouette and turns it into a sound. Freq2 takes these sounds and throws them in the mix – looping and layering to create a one off musical performance.

> *Heart Beats, Rhythms and Street Vibes* – Composer and musician, Eugene Skeef and Physicist Steve Mesure will conduct a live orchestral performance with our bodies as the instruments. It will explore the different tones that can be made by our own bodies alongside the instruments that the audiences will have made for the day.

Jane Reck from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council said: “Street Vibe aims to highlight the importance of engineering and the many different ways in which it can be used our everyday lives. It offers visitors the chance to participate in a fantastic range of innovative events and performances and is a great way for people to realise how fun and creative engineering can be.”