Getting Vivid

"We do almost all of our work overseas, so Vivid's great, that's a big reason why we like doing it,” explains Richard Lindsay, Head of Creative for Spinifex Group. Lindsay and his team are responsible for lighting the lights and sounding the sounds that make Vivid shine outside the doors of the Opera House, and this year will include multimedia projections not only on the sails, but also on the MCA and Customs House. Keep an eye out for the giant record player and pinball machine that the group will also create out of the Sydney landscape. Working on the series for about three months, Lindsay explains, “something we didn't realise was that an Australian group has never done it before; this is the first time. They've had Germans and French, and Brian Eno had a go. I think there was pressure from the start because you're doing it amongst your peers, in your own home town, and we're doing it for Sydney as well because we're Sydney people.”

Describing Spinifex's approach to 'setting the tone' of the festival, Lindsay and his wizards had a tough choice just narrowing down their ambition. However they've eventually settled on a theme of 'play' to capture a mixture of celebration and experimentation. “We think it's just a cute way to summarise what the approach is. It starts off with quite a retro feel and then evolves to a contemporary, dynamic state. I think Sydney doesn't take itself too seriously, well we do, but we are also a playful city, so we wanted to have a really lighthearted approach and quite vibrant feel. We've made sure there's more movement in the installations too this year, and a few more local touches too, so it feels like it's ours, the City of Sydney's, display. Which I think is important, especially for the Opera House because it's what it represents for the festival, so Play's our thing.”

In addition to the beautiful, iconic visuals (using the Opera House sails as a blank screen), the Spinifex kids have also worked to make sure sound will be a big part of their work. “I don't believe you can do a lot of these things without audio. Audio's always a big part of the emotional pull, so we were pretty keen to make sure sound was present. We went to a lot of effort to put in mobile listening posts all around, and get sound out via an FM frequency so that local bars, restaurants and people around can tune in to listen as well as watch; it'll make a huge difference. There was sound last year, but no one really got a good chance to hear it.”

One of the big events this year will be the local celebration of Doctor Who's 50^th anniversary, with Spinifex taking over Customs House to project the Doctor and some of his most famous villains running across the building walls (complete with theme tune and Murray Gold music, of course). “That's with the BBC, a bit of a one-night-only thing, and this year it seems our presence is growing, but it's good, we're pretty excited by it. You don't ever really expect to be working on stuff like that, when do you think that Doctor Who would be running around on Sydney buildings? You don't expect that to happen, but it does, and it's pretty kitsch and it'll be fun.”