Christie’s Australian partner, Mandylights, played an instrumental role in transforming Wulugul Walk in Sydney’s Barangaroo precinct into a magical bushland filled with dramatic lighting and mesmerising puppetry during Vivid Sydney 2018.
Known as The Liminal Hour, the multimedia experience was designed by the artists at Mandylights, Erth Visual & Physical, Jacob Nash and James Brown. It featured a walking, 6m high, illuminated puppet named Marri Dyin wandering the site and interacting with spectators. In addition, there were several moments which incorporated the precinct’s tower lighting and audio features with integrated elements within the puppet to create a large-format spectacle.
The project was commissioned by the Barangaroo Delivery Authority to showcase a unique creative program to share the stories of the Barangaroo precinct and celebrate the femininity of the site’s namesake. Mandylights was responsible for the lighting design of Marri Dyin, including the use of a pair of Christie Pandoras Box Widget Designer, as well as 350 internal LED lights that were wirelessly controlled and triggered from both an onsite iPad and an external lighting control system.
Clint Dulieu, technical designer, Mandylights, said: “For this show, it was essential that both lighting and audio appeared organic and fluid, and transitions between cues and tracks had to be seamless regardless of where we were coming from or going to. This meant that we needed much more than canned show replay, and to have a nice front-end for the cast members. We had therefore chosen the Widget Designer as it enabled me to customize a front-end interface that gave the puppeteers from Erth everything they needed.”
The first Widget Designer was used for the main control engine within the puppet itself and was installed on-board in a custom system that was built into a waterproof case. The second Widget Designer was deployed in the main control room and served as a bridge taking in cue commands from QLab show control, and outputting to the GrandMA2 lighting control system via telnet.
Singling-out the Widget Designer as one of the technology tools that contributed to The Liminal Hour’s success, Dulieu noted that it was great being able to work directly with the software support team at Christie to get solutions, fast. He said: “Widget Designer enabled us to achieve a control solution that not only filled all of our specific requirements from the technical side, but whilst doing so did not in any way limit the artistic needs of our puppeteers which is quite the challenge.”