Frost and Arup collaborate on interactive laser environment for the Suez Canal laneway in The Rocks for Vivid Light, part of Vivid Sydney
Frost* will partner with lighting design and sound engineering consultants at Arup to create a unique art installation for Vivid Light, one of the most popular programs of Vivid Sydney, the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest annual celebration of light, music and ideas.
The consultants will join more than 60 local and international creative practitioners, whose works have been selected to transform the city into colourful after-dark canvas of interactive light art sculptures, innovative installations and grand scale projections, including the famous illumination of the Sydney Opera House sails. Running from 24 May to 10 June, more than 500,000 people flocked to the city and foreshore to see the works in 2012.
Now in its fifth year, Vivid Light is the centrepiece of Vivid Sydney. A key creative component and a crowd favourite, Vivid Light 2013 will feature the festival’s largest ever interactive light walk, illumination of large CBD and heritage building facades, and projections onto iconic Sydney buildings within the Vivid Sydney precinct.
Sydney based creative agency Frost*, collaborated on the successful submission with Arup. The team will create an interactive environment through light and sound called RICOCHET, for the Suez Canal laneway in The Rocks. The piece will feature an intersecting network of laser beams, using the long narrow form of the Suez Canal to create a laser web, which reacts to the movement of people within the space through sound and colour change. ARIA Award winning producer and songwriter Lee Groves, will create custom audio tracks for the work.
Says Tim Hunt, lighting designer at Arup: “After three successful installations in the Vivid Sydney Festival, we decided to pursue a new direction this year. We invited Frost* to collaborate with us, aligning ourselves with like-minded, design driven people from a different creative industry. Bringing design thinking and technical knowledge together has enabled us to broaden our conceptual approach beyond our own fields of expertise. The energy and ideas that have come from the process has generated a great concept.”
Says Vince Frost, founder and executive creative director of Frost*: “It was a thrill when Arup asked us to join them in making a submission for Vivid Light and even more exciting to see it be selected.
“Design and art go hand in hand and we believe that our artistic practice strongly influences the innovation and creative thinking we offer our commercial clients. It’s definitely fun, if not a little daunting, to work on a project where the client we have to impress is the people of Sydney, no less.”
NSW deputy premier and minister for trade and investment, Andrew Stoner, said Vivid Light provided creative and lighting industry practitioners from around the world with the chance to create innovative lighting and light art in what is arguably one of the most stunning outdoor stages in the world – the Sydney Harbour Foreshore and surrounds.
Says Stoner: “Vivid Light 2012 featured dozens of interactive installations that entertained crowds of all ages on both large and small scales and featured clever concepts that generated highly intelligent, personalised and visual viewer experiences.
“The submission from Arup and Frost* was in keeping with the spirit of pushing boundaries and showcasing the newest technologies, for Sydneysiders and visitors to interact with and physically explore. It will be wonderful to see this piece come to life.”
Last year Arup created ‘Light Breezes’ (pictured), a created a playful collaboration of light and fabric during Vivid Sydney 2012. The light installation was sited along Cambridge Street, within The Rocks, connecting with the original Nurses Walk and Argyle Cut.
The installation invited the passerby to engage and interact with light by hanging a series of illuminated fabric socks. From the nearby Argyle Cut, passersby’s could see the lights as they fluttered in the breeze, changing colour and brightness, like fluid beacons.
Frost* have created a number of public artworks, including a piece called “Wonderland” at Tamarama Beach for Sculpture by the Sea in 2008.