Vivid 2011

I spent the long weekend in Melbourne with a few lovely southerner friends. (Is that what you call people from Melbourne?) One of them made the remark that whilst Sydney has a long way to go to catch up with Melbourne’s underground art/music/bar/restaurant/whatever scene, it does do the Big Festival thing well. And that’s pretty true. In between Biennale, Sydney Festival, Sculptures by the Sea, and the various suburb festivals Sydney offers some pretty amazing free events. And Vivid falls squarely into that category. In case you completely missed it – as I did last year – it is a festival of light featuring 45-odd light installations and sculptures centered around Circular Quay and the Rocks. It ran for about two weeks, finishing up last weekend.

On a very cool and windy Wednesday night I headed out to check out as much of it as I could. The weather didn’t work out too badly – it kept numbers down and thinned out the rows and rows of tripods around the Quay. I worked my way around as many of the installations as I could but probably only saw about half of the sites on offer. My favorites from the evening were ‘Social Firefly’, ‘Unfamiliar Customs’ and ‘The Garrison’. The interactive paint project at the MCA was also lots of fun. I confess being a bit underwhelmed by the Opera House, but it was very neon and shiny which is quite Sydney after all.

You can see some of the photos I grabbed from the evening in the gallery below, as well as my clip of the Customs House animation. There’s some great sound design accompanying the animation, so be sure to turn your speakers up!