Vivid Sydney 2011

Sydney will once again be transformed into a spectacular canvas of light, music and ideas when Vivid Sydney takes over the city after dark from 27 May -13 June 2011.

Vivid Sydney will colour the city with creativity and inspiration, featuring breathtaking immersive light projections on the iconic Sydney Opera House sails, performances from local and international musicians as part of Vivid LIVE and a free outdoor exhibition of interactive light sculptures.

This winter Sydney will once again be transformed into a vibrant canvas for light, music, art and ideas during the 2011 Vivid Sydney festival. Approaching its third birthday, Vivid Sydney promises to be infused with more creativity and innovation than the city has ever seen before.

The Fire Dance display in Campbells Cove is just the beginning of what Vivid Sydney has to offer. A playful show of flaming geysers will perform five times each night of the festival, the flames strong enough to spread a little warmth to viewers admiring from the harbour in the chilly winter air.

You won't believe your eyes as the streets, skyscrapers and sidewalks become the stage for breathtaking light shows and installations after dark, illuminating every nook and cranny of the city from the sails of the Opera House to the walls of the iconic Customs House. This year, the festival is even infiltrating various storefronts, restaurants and bars throughout The Rocks that will have special Vivid window displays, menus and cocktails.

The curator of Vivd LIVE, Stephen Pavlovic, has selected an extraordinary team from France, who will push the lighting the Sydney Opera House sails further than it has ever been taken before. The multi-disciplined, multi-talented art & design collective, SUPERBIEN create sumptuous environments of animation, photography, light, space and graphic design. Their incredibly compelling work has been transmitted virally at speeds approaching the light it’s made from. These young, innovative, restless perfectionists are the ideal embodiment of the spirit of Vivid in 2011. Unique and gripping, each of their creations is an immersive experience, seamlessly integrating every possible technique into new forms of multimedia expression. Come down to the harbour and watch this compelling artwork unfold before your eyes. See Sydney Opera House come alive like you’ve never seen before, and never will again. As someone said about the Sydney opera House - "It's the iconic image that beams around the world"

The Customs House will turns into glass, mercury, paper and water in a dizzying state of the art projection. Nothing is as it seems as one of Sydney’s most stunning colonial buildings, Customs House, turns into glass, mercury, paper and water in a dizzying state of the art projection display. Large-scale image projection experts The Electric Canvas will transform this iconic sandstone architecture with a series of 3D-mapped animation sequences. Unfamiliar Customs was created entirely on a virtual model using powerful computers driven by the visibly smart 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Processors.

Vivid Sydney will include over 40 stunning light art installations from local and international artists in a free outdoor exhibition where children are encouraged to climb on interactive sculptures and aspiring photographers can put their night camera settings to the test. People of all ages will enjoy this sensory experience, interacting with diverse and colourful sculptures including an enormous sketchpad where you can draw your own light art, a giant crystal spiderweb shimmering in the dark, a social network of friendly fireflies that that react to torch light and a group of rainbow life-size men.

In 2011 the festival will also include a range of artistic collaborations, public talks and debates from leading creative thinkers from Australia and around the world, celebrating Sydney as the creative hub of the Asia Pacific.

To top it all up there's Vivid Live, an extraordinary lineup of eclectic bands and performances that will be on throughout the festival, all coordinated by Modular's Stephen Pavlovic. This lineup is bound to have something for everyone. Among the hit acts announced to perform are Bag Raiders, Architecture in Helsinki, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolfmother, The Avalances, Tame Impala and the Presets. And that's not even half.

For more information about Vivid Sydney 2011 see the website http://vividsydney.com/