Gurrumul performs at Melbourne Festival. Picture: Jim Lee Source: Supplied THE Hoddle Grid that forms the streetscape of inner-city Melbourne was laid out in 1837, during the term of governor George Gipps. The governor did not much like the cosmopolitan urban amenity of the city square, believing such gatheringplaces were likely to encourage the spread of dangerous ideas such as democracy. Gipps's legacy is that there are no substantial squares or plazas within the CBD limits. The Melbourne Festival has adopted the distinctive rectangle of the Hoddle Grid as its new logo. And on the festival's first weekend there was opportunity to reflect on its origins and on festival director Josephine Ridge's desire that her program encourage interminglings of artists and audiences. Gipps would not be amused. The weekend certainly offered a variety of crowd experiences, from the hideous hordes of the Zombie Shuffle on Saturday to the thousands who shuffled heroically through the rain in the final kilometres of the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday. Ridge's festival began under sunnier skies on Friday afternoon at Tanderrum, a welcome to country at Federation Square, organised by indigenous theatre company Ilbijerri. Just outside the Hoddle perimeter, Federation Square is a decade-old cultural precinct and popular gathering spot; long before white settlement it was a meeting place for local tribes. Tanderrum included a smoking ceremony and the arrival of five representatives of the Kulin nations, resplendent in their possum-skin cloaks. A dance around the campfire ensued, with festival board of directors president Carrillo Gantner, Arts Minister Heidi Victoria and Ridge leading the whitefella contingent. During the decade Ridge spent as executive director of the Sydney Festival, she witnessed the phenomenon of Festival First Night, an outdoor street party and artist showcase that ran for five years and regularly attracted upwards of 200,000 people. In Sydney this year, festival director Lieven Bertels opted for a daytime opener, including the joyous maritime arrival of a giant rubber duck. But even the family day has reportedly hit a snag, with the loss of state government funding for it. An opposite trend is happening in Melbourne, where the inaugural White Night festival last February drew 300,000 people into the city centre after dark for street performers, illuminations, late-opening galleries and concerts. Its success is a reminder that people are attracted to crowds - especially when there is novelty and balmy air - and the event will be repeated on February 22. In retrospect, the proposal to move the Melbourne Festival to February and coincide with White Night made some sense. The idea has been abandoned - it was opposed by other arts organisations - and Ridge declares that the Melbourne Festival should succeed regardless of the season. Her festival does not include, as some of her predecessors' have, a free outdoor spectacular of the kind that will attract people in their thousands. But she has encouraged festival visitors to reflect on crowds and popular entertainments in other ways. Richard Tognetti and filmmaker Jon Frank have drawn on Elias Canetti's 1960 study Crowds and Power for their film-and-concert piece The Crowd, which screened at the Palais Theatre on Friday. Canetti linked the behaviour of crowds with other social phenomena and made a celebrated comparison between orchestral conductors and autocratic leaders: "There is no more obvious expression of power than the performance of a conductor," he writes. The image of the all-powerful conductor is made plain in The Crowd, with Tognetti on the podium directing a symphony orchestra and choir. But the conductor's dominance is counterbalanced by Tognetti having different musicians stand to give their solos in spot lighting. The beautiful lighting design by Bluebottle could be a model for future orchestral adventures of this kind. Another orchestral event at the weekend was Saturday night's gig with Gurrumul, his band and Philharmonia Australia under the baton of Iain Grandage. The concert includes a multimedia component, with footage of Gurrumul's island home off the coast of Arnhem Land, and of elders who describe the local dreaming stories. There was plenty of love at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, where a large audience stood to give its applause. It was a perfect evening under clear skies. Gurrumul remains an enigmatic figure, however, and the large orchestra, sound design and video screens do not necessarily bring the viewer closer to his personality and art. It may not be surprising, given their presence in our lives, that video and projection screens should feature prominently in an arts festival. Almost every show I've seen during the past few days has used the moving image on screen, whether as a medium of nostalgia (Brief Encounter, Fearless Nadia), surveillance (Daniel Schlusser Ensemble's M&M), or amplification (Gurrumul). Tacita Dean's installation at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, called Film, is an 11-minute loop that was originally made for the enormous Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. Dean uses 35mm film, analog processes and allusions to cinematic culture in a wide-screen format tipped to the vertical. By upending the screen so that it stands 13m tall, Dean reminds the viewer of cinema's monumentality, and that film-based image-making has not been exhausted in the digital age. Ridge has astutely appointed two specialist programmers for the festival, with Tognetti and visual-arts curator Louise Neri making contributions as creative associates. Tognetti's classical music program will roll out over coming weeks, with his Haydn for Everyone series of chamber-music concerts and the ACO returning to Melbourne with cellist Steven Isserlis. Neri, founding director of the art space known today as Gertrude Contemporary, and now a director of Gagosian Gallery based in New York, has invited to Melbourne a group of international artists who "don't just make things to look at." Her visual arts program includes Royce Ng's video installation at Gertrude Contemporary, Somali Peace Band (with a live performance last Saturday by local Somali musicians), and at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, US artist-educator Wendy Ewald, who Neri says is interested in working on a photographic project here. Mexican artist Pedro Reyes's installation Disarm at the National Gallery of Victoria came to life on Saturday afternoon. Reyes has fashioned musical instruments from firearms confiscated by the Mexican government: a piccolo made from a sawn-off rifle, for example, and a violin whose body is made from welded handguns. This unconventional band does not make a sweet sound, but Reyes has transformed instruments of death into a thought-provoking work of art. The Melbourne Festival continues until October 27.