The Smart Light Story
Smart Light Sydney is celebration of light art, music and ideas.
Smart Light Sydney was conceived by Sydney born, Lighting Designer and Music Composer Mary-Anne Kyriakou. The idea came about three years ago on a trip to Frankfurt’s largest light fair in the world. Mary-Anne experienced Luminale the associated Light Festival which was a life changing experience and upon her return to Australia she created the not for profit Smart Light Sydney™ organisation with Barry Webb and Davina Jackson.
Unlike most other artificial light festivals, Smart Light Sydney is focused on delivering Light Art works that are created and driven by innovation, energy conscious awareness and design.
Smart Light Sydney 2009 featured 25 light art installations, where digital light technology was the primary medium. Three aspects were the focus for 2009, namely:
1. Architectural Treatments – façade and building treatments where the architecture and associated landscape elements are central to creating the works. Eight of the twenty five installations were architectural treatments including Brian Eno’s lighting the Sails, 1000s of images were projected onto the sails of the Sydney Opera House; and Tim Carr’s Nothing Left to Guess, used an intensity of crimson and white light to create a space of wonder and play around the historical Moore Steps.
2. Theatre and Performance - design using a black box approach i.e. lighting is added to create the scene. Six installations including Light Artists Kurt Laurenz Theinert and Axel Hemprich (from Germany) with performances of ‘Hammerhaus’, the artists used a virtual light piano to create and manipulate light, which was performed live with music.
3. Sculptural Light Art Works – primarily sculptural art works with light as the primary medium. The remaining eleven light art works were in this category including Warren Langely’s 12 m high sculpture - Vessel of (horti) Cultural Plenty, which used over 220 metres of light optical cable and 3 x 150 w metal halide lamps to create his sculptural effect.
Smart Light Sydney offset the lamp power consumption by the installations through engaging city building tenants to commit to switching off lights after 7pm. A positive outcome was energy savings of 5 MW of lamp power for the festival period (building tentants reduced their lamp power by 12MW and the festival consumed 7 MW).
The focus on lamp power consumption reflects the approach taken by the Building Code of Australia to regulate lamp power consumption in office buildings and building designers to comply with these set standards.
The theme for Smart Light Sydney 2009 was City and Memories. This came about from the appreciation of the poetic nature of light, Australia being the first to ‘ban the bulb’ ie phase of inefficient lamp equipment, historic nature of the harbour foreshore and wanting to create positive experiences for everyone in city environments through light art works. Cities are no longer only defined by their architecture but also by their atmospheres to create memorable experiences.
