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May 2013

Nina Bertok

Sydney will become a brilliant canvas of beautiful light, ground-breaking music and innovative ideas over an 18-day period which will attract visitors from all around Australia and overseas.

Considered to be the largest festival of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, Vivid Sydney officially launches tomorrow, May 24, and is described as ‘the point where art meets reality’ by Creative Advisor, Ignatius Jones.

“It’s such a unique proposition, it’s nothing like the old fashioned concept of an arts festival,” he claims. “It celebrates the creative industry, where art and technology meet commerce. There are three pillars to Vivid that perfectly represent what it’s about – Vivid Ideas, Vivid Music and Vivid Light. We first started projecting still images on the Opera House five years ago and now we are doing a huge 3D mapped video projection on the building. It’s proved so popular that we’re doing it on other beautiful old buildings around the city area as well, including the Harbour Bridge.”

For the first time in the event’s five-year history, ‘Vivid Light’ will extend to Darling Harbour and transform the precinct into a spectacle of dancing water fountains, water screen projection performances and dazzling light and water shows which have never been witnessed in Australia before. Masterminded by France’s legendary Aquatique Show International, Jones says spectators are in for an unforgettable visual display.

“They are bringing their unique brand of water theatre which is a combination of dancing fountains, water screens, lasers, computer choreographed music… and those are just a few things that are going on! However, the most famous face of Vivid is the music. Previously we’ve had live guests like The Cure in 2011 – that sold out in 20 minutes. This year we have Kraftwerk playing all of their albums over four nights in full 3D at the Opera House. The aim is to break away that association of the Opera House with just the ballet, symphony orchestras and opera – we’re now programming modern, edgy stuff like Empire Of The Sun and an orchestral tribute to Joy Dimension. It’s been a real drawing card as we discovered that last year 60 percent of those who came to the Opera House had never been there before!”

Jones claims that he likes to think that Vivid Sydney is helping to give the Opera House back to the people in many ways – taking the art off the walls and putting it out on the street for people to touch, feel and get close to it, metaphorically speaking.

“What we look for is acts and artists who break new ground – whether they did so in the past or whether they’re looking to in the future. When The Cure played, they performed their first three albums which are still considered to have been quite ground-breaking. Kraftwerk is in the same boat – they were pioneers in the electronic music scene and they were ground-breakers in the past. Empire Of The Sun are one of our own most ground-breaking acts in the last several years. So what Vivid Sydney is about is very much a balance between the past, the present and the future.”

Vivid Sydney shows until June 10.

vividsydney.com