Beauty of our Natural World Projected
Now in its 13th year, Vivid Sydney transformed the Harbour City into an illuminating fusion of creativity, innovation, and technology from Friday, May 26 to Saturday, June 17, with more than 300 events and activations across Light, Music, Ideas and Food. It would be easy for a company like Technical Direction Company (TDC) to deliver the same projection technology each and every year for Vivid Sydney, however it’s part of TDC’s DNA to constantly explore the latest upcoming technology, to refine and optimize its video solutions offering. “Vivid Sydney is Australia’s biggest festival celebrating creativity, technology and innovation, and this year the festival celebrated the beauty and diversity of our natural world,” Vivid Sydney Festival Director, Gill Minervini said. “Being able to collaborate with leading innovative partners like TDC is essential to bringing Vivid Sydney to life and creating a truly unforgettable experience for festival-goers.”
Record-breaking Laser Projection
TDC’s highly experienced team of project managers, creative technologists, designers, and engineers were involved in redesigning the projection in 2023 to provide more pixels, brightness, better efficiency and from a technical point of view, a greater result for over 20 installations at Vivid Sydney in 2023. The theme, The Beauty of our Natural World, was presented in pristine pixel perfection at Vivid Sydney with the largest installation of laser projectors ever mounted in the Southern Hemisphere. In a world first, the astonishing array of over 150 laser projectors deployed throughout the festival by TDC featured 30 state-of-the-art UDM-4K30 systems from Barco. TDC’s fleet of laser projectors illuminated multiple sites across Vivid Sydney including projecting onto Australia’s largest museum object–the HMAS Vampire, as well as Customs House, ASN Clocktower and, of course, the Sydney Opera House, all displaying visually spectacular artworks celebrating the natural world.
“Every year TDC evolves its technology offering and this year our project teams were very excited to be achieving a world first in laser projection,” said Michael Hassett, Founder & Managing Director at TDC. “The Barco technology has standout features including high brightness, low latency processing and a robust design–plus Barco is the only projection system that meets our requirements for color uniformity, reduced power consumption and return on investment.” Laser projectors have more light output than conventional lamp-based projectors, they deliver superior fidelity and sharper contrast using significantly less power than older technologies. The projectors delivered unprecedented levels of light illumination to produce an eye-watering billion total pixels each evening, more than double the total pixels in 2022. At the same time, energy consumption was 150 kilowatts per hour (kWh) lower than last year. Put another way, TDC was able to deliver a 25% increase in projection coverage for Vivid Sydney in 2023 while emitting less carbon waste than in 2022.
In View with TDC LiveView
For Vivid Sydney, TDC also deployed its TDC LiveView automated remote monitoring system. Drew Ferors, Head of Technical Services & Training at TDC, explains: “TDC LiveView is an automated solution that monitored thousands of pieces of equipment used at Vivid Sydney across our installations. With it we can collect real-time data such as the temperature of all the equipment sitting outdoors in projection enclosures, along with information on how the kit is performing.” Operators and engineers were based at a control center. All data from each installation was provided by TDC LiveView and if any technical challenges arose, engineers were dispatched to immediately resolve any issue. All TDC projector enclosures were climate controlled for enhanced equipment performance with installations at Vivid Sydney monitored by camera systems that also feed back to the LiveView App.
Hassett also noted, “We always provide manufacturers with some processing and operational suggestions for improvement in deployment which this year included low operational costs and monitoring using our TDC LiveView platform in order to operate the equipment from one central location. We were delighted to have that direct feedback included in the UDM-4K30 which visitors to Vivid Sydney were the first to see in action anywhere.” Executive Vice President, Barco Immersive Experience, Erdem Soyal said: “We greatly value our longstanding partnership with TDC and were more than happy to integrate their customer feedback into the design of our technology. From all corners of the globe, we watched the results of this world-first deployment by the experts at TDC of the UDM-4K30 with great interest and wished everyone who visited Vivid Sydney the very richest of experiences.”
To fully understand the project scale and shift towards best practices in video solutions and design, TDC shared the following facts and achievements at Vivid Sydney. Over 3.5 million lumens of projected light were produced each evening. Unprecedented levels of projection produced an impressive 1 billion total pixels each evening of the 2023 festival. In contrast, TDC achieved 230,000,000 pixels in 2022. Vivid Sydney’s Minervini concluded, “We always aim to improve the sensory experience for visitors to Vivid Sydney. Experiencing the glorious vibrancy and fragility of our natural world has never been more important and we were thrilled that visitors were able to immerse themselves in the artworks deeper than ever before.”
The Technical Direction Company (TDC) shared this insightful look behind the technology used on Vivid Sydney in 2023. You can find further information from the Technical Direction Company at www.tdc.com.au
