Our first stop on Thursday night was the area around Customs House. The installation Chrysalis contained colorful cocoons made of fibre optic cables hanging from trees that had butterflies inside that would flutter based on sounds nearby. Synergy represented a complex superorganism of a tree surrounded by ferns that changed colors.
On Customs House itself were light projections of the May Gibbs' children's books characters Snugglepot and Cuddlepie as they journeyed through the Australian bush.
Along the waterfront towards the Sydney Opera House were a few installations, including the light sculpture Visible Dynamics and the illuminated cube Fragmented.
In the Royal Botanical Gardens there were a number of fantastic installations. At the start was The Nautilus Forest with its changing colors, the illuminated Hyperweb, inflatable versions of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and wave inspired light bars of He'e nalu.
Light Houses were created with different designs and shapes and changed colors. One of the most moving pieces was Oasis, which paid homage to the memory of children growing up in out of home care and combined audio with illuminated lights in a pond.
Further in the Royal Botanical Gardens were the cute perched birds of Parrot Party and the interactive Aqueous where the colors would change as people stood on different sections of the pathway.
Tonight we headed to Barangaroo for dinner at the Chinese restaurant Lotus and then saw my favorite work of Vivid Sydney, which was the illuminated large scale puppet Marri Dyin (meaning 'Great Woman' in the Eora language) in the piece The Liminal Hour.
There were some good installations around The Rocks, with the different colored light tubes of Peacock, the multi-colored birds of 1000 Cranes, the flying neon kites of Luminous Flight, and the large sculpture Illuminosaurus.
Of course the main draw each year are the light projections on the Sydney Opera House. This year's installation Metamathemagical transformed the sails into a series of kinetic digital sculptures.
In the surrounds of the waterfront there were some playful pieces, including a giant inflated Earth, the rotating pufferfish sculpture Fugu, The Garden of Sweeties which was powered by renewable energy, and the cute Harmony Valley - Rainbow of Peace and Trees of Friendship.
Once again there were large scale light projections on the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia with Virtual Vibration, but they weren't as exciting or dynamic as last year's ones.
Overall I enjoyed the light projections and installations, but was surprised at how empty the streets were of people on both nights. Vivid Sydney is on until Saturday, 16 June 2018.
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