TDC, Technical Direction Company, returned to Vivid Sydney from 22 May to 8 June 2015. With an opening weekend attended by more than a quarter of a million people, TDC provided video expertise in cutting edge mapping techniques and key video technology across an unprecedented 10km distance as the 18-day festival expanded into new Chatswood and Central Park precincts.
Anthony Bastic, Vivid light curator says: “Vivid Sydney placed art into the hands of the public, giving visitors a visually triumphant feast of artistic and technical innovation.”
Vivid Sydney is probably the world’s largest festival of light, music and ideas and is owned and managed by Destination NSW, the NSW Government’s Tourism and Major Events agency.
Michael Hassett, managing director of TDC, said: “We’ve worked with Destination NSW on Vivid Sydney for four years now, and it is so great to see the huge public appreciation and genuine delight that is experienced each year as the festival has evolved. We are proud to have collaborated with the creative talent of the artists that Destination NSW has brought together this year to develop the wonderful animations.”
“From a technology perspective it’s large in terms of the equipment required across several sites. Vivid Sydney required careful planning by skilled staff including design and mappings of the buildings to enable artists and designers to plan their animations,” explains Olin Winton, technical manager at TDC. “The artists we teamed up with this year made this process simple and enjoyable,” he says.
“This year TDC delivered over 70 high-resolution projectors, four types of media servers as well as technical infrastructure including two automation platforms, each with custom hardware and electronics to power the video projections,” explains Anthony Pellizzari, TDC’s technical project manager for this year’s festival.
“We had some additional challenges this year, with crane lifts, street closures for installs and six new sites to manage and it was great working with the highly experienced team at Destination NSW to help roll this out,” he says.
No project challenge was too small or large for TDC as Steve Cain, head technician and media specialist points out. “As well as site specific challenges, TDC had to overcome reflective surfaces such as glass from other buildings or water. It was a challenge to converge multiple projectors onto curved roofs, perform colour correction onto dark bricks and colour balancing of multiple projector models to match these evenly. Seeing the final result with people interacting with projections was really rewarding – something that we’re very proud of.”
Technical wizardry highlights:
· Video projection used an eye watering 7,464,960,000 total pixels on to the famousarchitecture of 10 buildings across Sydney
· 8976m2 of architecturally mapped video projection
· A total of 2,000,000 ANSI lumens, a measurement of projection light
· 1.8km of 3phase power cable, and 2.5km of fiber optic cable
· Vivid Sydney precinct wide network infrastructure
· In some areas such as Life Story, the show was run using ‘green’ energy
· 10 technical staff used their unique and comprehensive understanding of video and lighting as well as media networking
· 20 operational staff prepared and fine-tuned the equipment and gear in TDC’s warehouse prior to being on site
· 40 crew worked around the clock for 10 days to install all sites
· 10 specialist technicians programmed and lined up projection on all sites
