If you were a recent visitor to the Vivid Light Festival held in Sydney and happened to find yourself admiring the coloured lights and building projections along the Sydney Harbour foreshore we hope your attention was caught by light sculpture No 44 ‘Water Droplet’, situated at the northern end of the Overseas Passenger Terminal, Circular Quay.
The Water Droplet was a fully custom made aluminium and polycarbonate sculpture designed by the engineers at Aurecon consulting Sydney, who entered the festival to showcase their structural, lighting and audio visual design capabilities.
The Hills SVL Group brought the sculpture to life, realising the designer’s dream through the addition of several integrated sound, lighting and interactive control elements. The sculpture was lit with DTS Dive 9 and Focus lighting fixtures managed by an LSC Pharos programmable show controller. A MediaMatrix NION N6 provides sophisticated audio processing and control along with Australian Monitor AMD4100P amplification, three Turbosound Impact 35T satellite speakers and a hidden AM Cafe80P self-powered subwoofer.
When visitors stepped inside Water Droplet they heard a custom ambient musical composition of water sounds, thunder and even a didgeridoo. Strike one of the five DTS-lit ‘wind chime’ tubes and they saw a lighting state change and heard a surround-panning wind chime sound effect. Strike multiple chimes and it set off simultaneous sound and lighting effects. The sounds were stored as WAV files inside the NION, DMX512 lighting events were stored inside Pharos and triggers came from custom vibration sensors mounted within each chime tube.
The project was led by Jeff Shoesmith (SVL Consultant BDM) and Paul Owen (SVL Lighting Manager), with programming assistance from fellow Hills SVL staff Phil Scheul, Aaron Lee and Joel Mulpeter.
Photography by Prue Vickery Photography.
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