Sydney has just closed the doors on the third Vivid Festival - a wintry celebration of light and sculpture. While a variety of artists contribute some forty works focussed on energy-efficient lighting and sprinkled around the Sydney foreshore and historic Rocks and Circular Quay area, the highlights are the exquisite lighting of some of Sydney's premier buildings. 
In FireDance, forty jets of flames leap high in the air in a choreographed incendiary show set to music under the backdrop of the Sydney harbour Bridge.
The Opera House featured an exquisite ever-changing pattern of lights illuminating the famed sails in a mix of bright colours and unusual modern patterns. The French art group, Superbien combined light animation, psychedelic designs and three dimensional projections that seem to combine cartoons, geometric shapes and dazzling colours in a strange collage of light. The effects can be seen in the various photos below (click on each photo for a larger image). 
Customs House was the undoubted highlight, choreographing projections onto the colonial building to music with a revolving ten minute sequence featuring tricks of light that made elegant sandstone building crumble, sneeze, bulge, fill with water, liquefy, burn and be splattered in paint (check out a video here that details the show). The alignment of lights with the columns, balconies and intricate features of the building is so precise that the movement of one of the projectors by a distance less than the width of a coin would spoil the image completely.
Enjoy the wonderful shots of the Opera House and a handful of the light sculptures. A sequence of photos of Customs House will come in a few days.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sydney Turns On the Lights (Australia)
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9 comments:
Fabulous, especially the Customs House. Even after watching the video I'm still not sure if the big clock on the face of the building is real or projected.
@barbara: The clock is real but the light show had it spinning uncontrollably in several lighting sequences.
The lights are on and someone is definately home. Fantastic photos - love them when enlarged. Good tip.
@anonymous: Thank you. Vivid has grown to be quite a festival over its three years of life.
All i can say is WOW,AMAZING,ect.
Great job for Aussies, The opera house its really fabulous, Iv'e been wanted to get the guaranteed lowest airfares to Australia to visit the opera house.
I had no idea that Sydney hosted this type of an event. The colors are awesome. I'd love to attend the Vivid in person. Oh the photo opps!
@anonymous: The Opera House looks great in its jacket of light.
@donna: The place is packed with photographers at all the favourite vantage points for the Opera House and other buildings. Vivis has become an annual event.
Amazing lightshow - I've heard about the light painting that they used on the Customes House as the hostel we stayed in Hungary was designed by a well known Raypainter
@heather: I'd love to meet one of the ray-painters (never heard that term before). Must be a remarkably creative art.
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