Vivid Sydney will colour the city with creativity and inspiration, featuring breathtaking immersive light projections on the iconic Sydney Opera House sails, performances from local and international musicians as part of Vivid LIVE and a free outdoor exhibition of interactive light sculptures.
http://vividsydney.com
In real life however the 'breath taking immersive light projection' on the Opera house and other surrounding buildings resembled nothing more than giant screensavers. Green lines go down, red lines go across, green lines go down, red lines go across, green lines, red lines, green red green red and so on. Yes it was colourful and yes it was big, but really so what. It was pure technique with no content, it was mere decoration. The 'interactive light sculptures' were equally uninteresting and only confirmed my deep scepticism for the word 'interactive' in relation to art. Most of the interaction that audiences had with these sculptures was simply to do a basic action and the art work would change - ride an exercise bike and a light will turn on, wave your arms around and a colour will appear on a wall, stand in front of a glow in the dark screen and your shadow will be cast on a wall. Too often interactive art takes the position of being accessible simple because the audience takes part in the creation of the work, but this accessibility is a dubious pursuit because it assumes that much art is inaccessible, which leads to accusations of elitism.
I was going to have a little rant here about the misplaced pursuit of anti-elitism in art but then I remembered an essay I wrote during a Seminar program at uni which says everything I want to say here, so I'm going to post that instead.
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