VIVID Randomness 2015 (4)

Sydney May – June 2015 (9 photos). This is part 4 of 9 of my VIVID Sydney 2015 series.

It is now the last night of VIVID Sydney for 2015, and coincidentally a public holiday which marks the start of the ski season here. For the past 18 nights, Sydney has been aglow with various light projections and installations. Standing out in the wintery cold night air with a camera and tripod seems like a natural thing to do.

The centrepiece of the VIVID festival is known as the “Lighting of the Sails”. This year multi-disciplinary design collective, Universal Everything, was chosen to create a projected artwork for the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Founded by UK creative director Matt Pyke, the bold, colour-friendly group has previously collaborated with Radiohead, Warp Records and on large-scale events such as the London 2012 Olympics. Playing with technology to invent new forms of design and moving imagery, Universal Everything created a digital whirl of colour to be projected onto the sails of Australia’s major artistic icon.

The show was choreographed to music, although the music was not as loudly played or as important to the presentation as at last year’s event. Bold colours and lines definitely seemed to be keywords for this year’s presentation.

As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, I thought there was a bit of a jungle sub theme to the show this year.

But this was taking it a bit too far…

As is now my usual practice, if 2 years in a row can be called usual practice, I made my way to the concourse of the Sydney Opera House. Little did I know that a giant guardian had been deployed this year to try and stop me from getting too close.

I heard a scream and a deep voice cry out, “You shall not pass!”

I looked up and watched in horror as the guardian fried that innocent man up there. I flew up there in a rage.

“Whoa, monster of the night!” I roared. “Begone! Return to the shadow whence you came. You have no power over me.”

He shot his laser beam at me. I fought back with fire. And then he was gone. Victorious, I continued on.

To the victor goes the spoils. For several minutes, I bathed in the lights of VIVID, thereby revealing my identity to anyone who cared or dared to know.

Looking back at the lights of the city from the Sydney Opera House, the projector lights make for interesting viewing.

The lights on the buildings in the background were controlled by the public at a booth on that side of the water. You can see the Museum of Contemporary Art glowing in yellow and red on the foreshore opposite. We now leave the Sydney Opera House (albeit temporarily) and head towards that Museum, stopping to watch the show at Customs House in the next post.

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Over at the Weekly Photo challenge, the theme is “Vivid”. This should be no surprise given that I am the Guest Author for the challenge this week. There have been some very colourful entries. To the participants, I hope you’ve enjoyed the theme.

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This is part 4 of my 9 part VIVID Sydney 2015 series.

All my photography from this and previous years of VIVID Sydney going back to 2012 can be found here.