In the first year of Vivid Festival, 2009 when I saw the image projection on the Sydney Opera House, I was happy that someone had the same idea with me about a creative way of appreciating the beauty of this architecture after sun goes down. British musician Brian Eno was the first curator of this fresh concept of light and music festival. Unfortunately I lost all my photos of that year due to the malfunction of my hardware storage, which evoked the complex thoughts about the value of images in this digital era.

In the second year, the Macquarie street was added as a festival venue and St. Mary’s Cathedral became the centre hub of the festival. The illumination of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on the water created the hallucination of an island of paradise. As a co-curator of this year festival with musician Lou Reed, artist and musician Laurie Anderson offered the extra pleasure for the audience by sharing NASA residency art project experience. Most of all, the City of Sydney (Creative Sydney) enriched the festival program by adding  creative seminars and performance events under the title of  ‘Light, Music and Ideas’.

The 2011 Vivid is my favourite so far, especially the fantastic Opera house light designed by ‘Superbien’ as the word speak for itself, ‘Super good!’ The Customs House created spectacular building with an interactive 3D projection. The Sony lounge at the Opera House studio held a party of light and music and electric musical instruments played beats that sound like insects. At the end of the night, the bowl of noodle under the light-rain amplified the mood.

Now, 2012, I can confirm the popularity of this festival surrounded by the packed crowd. This year’s Vivid appears to comprise of more interactive and conceptual elements. For quite a while, I immersed in the installation of surrealistic SF effect boxes.