Auckland Fringe is an open-access, pan-arts festival that aims to provide a platform for practitioners to present innovative work in an environment of artistic freedom and to enable audiences to access these eclectic arts experiences. First held in 2009, Auckland Fringe 2013 featured more than 115 events abetted by 40-something like-minded theatres, streets, parks, plazas, churches, halls, kitchens, lofts, basements, galleries, dive bars, café's, fales, silos and swimming pools across the city. 

In celebration of this rather wonderful festival, BLOUIN ARTINFO brings you eight of the most awesome 2013 Auckland Fringe events;

1. If you fancy a singular Fringe experience to get the party started, dare to enter “The Enigma Box” where an actor waits to be informed of their act.  Make an appointment, and select from the Enigma Menu what you’d like them to perform. You won’t know who’s in the box, or what’s on the menu, until you venture in. You can order your own experience performed up close and personally by the mystery actor. With a new actor and new specials each night, the production is designed like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates – You never know what you're gonna get.

2. With “Cusp,” a participatory, kinetic sculpture that invites the audience to explore the motion of a series of pendulums, designer and engineer Doug Makison has created a luminescent trace that records the cyclic patterns creating a memory of our influence. The swinging motion gradually decays and the image fades leaving a blank canvas for the next person to fill. 

3. “Jeu Play” is an immersive and interactive installation where participants can discover a collection of digital instruments which manipulate a visual and audio reactive environment. Attendees can become part of an orchestra, playing the work with interfaces such as sensors and joysticks to produce compositions of sound and light. 

4. Eli and Hamish don onesie jumpsuits covered in velcro strips for “Velcro City,” a live-action cartoon following the lives of citizens in a city held together by hooks and hoops. The performers portray dozens of characters in the story of a city turned on its head. Get set for a visual and comedic feast, with the entire set and costumes drawn in wicked Crayola felt-tips.

5. Visitors to Auckland Zoo are able to experience the imaginative hybrid creatures of artist Kim Newall coming alive through the eyes of their smart phone. Newall creates her creatures using of a mix traditional drawing and animation methods, and digital interactive media. The creatures exist in the space between the digital and the physical and evolve their unique identities through audience engagement.

6. Every Friday and Saturday night during Fringe, Auckland's windows, doorframes, pipes and signs all become boundaries and obstacles for “Snake The Planet” by Mobile Projection Unit (MPU), an adaptation of the classic game “Snake.” When “Snake The Planet” is projected onto buildings, each level is generated individually and based on the selected facade. The multiplayer mode lets players intentionally block each other’s path in order to destroy the opponent. 

7. Fresh from successful Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe seasons, Wil Greenway presents “A Night To Dismember,” a low budget/hi fantasy heavyhearted comedy about inadequacy, asteroids, and the shark that ate his arms.

8. Last, but not least, in a dusty, forgotten corner of the Auckland CBD, visitors can visit the dingy dwelling of Him - a recluse who lives obsessively through his only connection with the outside world - a daily newspaper delivered through a slot in his front door. Devised and performed by Barnie Duncan, “...him” is a startling, beautiful and ultimately uplifting portrait of a complex man.

Auckland Fringe 2013 is currently being held throughout Auckland until 10 March 2013. For the full Auckland Fringe program click here