Client: Destination New South Wales
Location: Sydney Harbour Bridge
The Electric Canvas was honoured to deliver “EORA: Broken Spear” for Vivid Sydney. We worked in collaboration with one of Australia’s most prominent Indigenous arts leaders, Rhoda Roberts AO, who curated the piece, which reminded us all to reflect, to call Country, to read Country and listen to Country. This engaging projection onto the southeastern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was one of Vivid Sydney’s highlights.
Covering the 89 metre high pylon with bright, high resolution, dynamic projection was a significant challenge from both a technical and creative point of view, given the project’s modest budget. Our solution entailed deploying our legacy PIGI large-format projectors to provide the required coverage onto the entire height of the pylon, which we cleverly overlaid with a partial, irregular-shaped footprint created with digital projectors.
The meticulous integration of pixel-accurate digital masks mapped over the PIGI imagery made it possible to bring elements of the static scenes to life, such as flickering campfire flames and smoke billowing upwards. Another excellent example of this technique was the animated eels swimming behind a fishing net. The net was part of the static PIGI imagery, however a digital mask was overlaid on the net so that the moving eels appeared to be behind the net.
Using this hybrid system allowed us to deliver a highly successful projection show, within budget, that was extremely well received by the client, stakeholders and Vivid-goers alike