The annual turning on of the lighting display on the sails on the Sydney Opera House as part of the city’s ever-expanding Vivid festival has become a highlight of my travel year.
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Perched in a privileged position on the veranda of Quay Restaurant at the Overseas Passenger Terminal, drinking glasses of pretty good bubbly, watching the sails come to life, while surrounded by a bevy of overseas print and internet reporters especially brought to Sydney by Destination NSW, provides a rare moment when you ask yourself one of life’s big questions — does it get any better than this?
I suppose the only thing I could really ask for is an even greater sense of occasion, a countdown as on New Year’s Eve, perhaps someone, preferably someone well known to everyone for something apart from being a politician, flicking a switch.
Instead, it sort of sneaks up on you.
And so it was last night, as Sydney director Ash Bolland seemingly coaxed some fantastic creations straight out of his imagination and out of the harbour, sliding up the famous sails, to begin a display entitled Audio Creatures, a spectacular animation co-curated by Sydney Opera House and Destination NSW for Vivid Sydney.
Set to a soundtrack by Brazilian electronic producer Amon Tobin and featuring morphing marine and plant life, Audio Creatures is Bolland’s very contemporary response to Opera House architect Jørn Utzon’s masterpiece.
Perhaps it should be a giant hologram of the late Utzon flicking that switch I mentioned.
Audio Creatures will run each night from 6pm to 11pm until 17 June.
Vivid is certainly the festival that grew and it’s hard to believe that it has only been around since 2009, when Brian Eno set the Sydney Opera House sails alight as curator of the first Vivid Sydney.
Then it was mainly a giant light show centred on a lighting display illuminating those sails, with some music thrown in.
The late Lou Reed, who curated the 2010 event in conjunction with his wife and performance artist Laurie Anderson, would be chuffed how the event has grown in its spread and stature to the point where it attracts nearly two million visitors to the harbour city.
But it’s much more than just a light show on the sails of the Opera House, and the festival has three distinct, but decidedly interwoven prongs — light, music and ideas.
The light festival alone features more than 90 installations spread over seven distinct precincts, including, for the first time, Barrangaroo.
Highlights include: Trapdoor, at Barrangaroo, in which an optical illusion sees a cavernous underworld open before the eyes of spectators; Magicians of the Mist, at Darling Harbour, with lasers, fountains, flame jets, music and fireworks celebrating the power of creativity and innovation; Electric Forest, at The Royal Botanic Garden, which enters a strange world of illuminated plants; and Lights for the Wild, at Taronga Zoo, where spectators start their experience by stepping into the mouth PJ, the Port Jackson Shark, one of the many illuminated sculptures of endangered animals.
I’m not even going to start detailing more than 400 Vivid music events, except to say that I’ve been along to Hidden Sydney: The Glittering Mile, an excursion into the roller coaster ride that is the story of Kings Cross and the colourful cast of characters that gave it its gritty, glittery history.
It’s set over four floors of the World Bar, in Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, and it’s great fun, starting with a punch-up in the alley out back and finishing with drinks and a Graham Kennedy character leading a cabaret performance in a mock-up of the old Chevron Silver Spade.
It runs until June 18. Visit www.hiddensydney.com.au
And then there’s Vivid Ideas, with more than 280 sessions featuring 370 speakers from 12 countries across 67 venues.
Among the participants will be movie director Oliver Stone in conversation with Margaret Pomeranz; and Shepard Fairey, who will create one of his largest public murals ever in the heart of Sydney’s CBD and is best known for his Barack Obama HOPE campaign.
For details, visit www.vividsydney.com
John Rozentals was a guest of Destination NSW.