VIVID Sydney
Lighting of the Sails (Life Enlivened)
Large-scale animated tribute to John Olsen’s work
For Vivid Sydney 2023, we brought the work of one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, John Olsen, to life on the Sydney Opera House sails.
Drawing from over six decades of painting, the project translated Olsen’s distinctive visual language into a large-scale animated experience — seen nightly as the centrepiece of the festival.
The Brief
The Lighting of the Sails is the centrepiece of Vivid Sydney — a festival attracting millions of visitors each year
For 2023, the brief was to honour John Olsen’s extraordinary career, translating a body of work spanning more than 60 years into a cohesive, large-scale projection — while preserving the energy, movement and character of his painterly style.
The Experience
Life Enlivened unfolds as an animated journey through Olsen’s vision of the Australian landscape — from river systems and lily ponds to birds, waterways and shifting terrain.
Selected works were reinterpreted and brought into motion, allowing audiences to experience the artist’s distinctive line and sense of life in a new way.
Projected across the sails, the experience transformed static paintings into a living, rhythmic composition — celebrating Olsen’s enduring fascination with nature and movement.
The Build
Animation of ~15 key artworks spanning Olsen’s career
Hybrid animation approach combining traditional techniques with AI-assisted motion
Style-preserving workflows to retain the integrity of the original paintings
Content designed specifically for Opera House projection geometry
High-resolution, large-format delivery for nightly projection
Working closely with the curatorial team, we focused on translating Olsen’s “propulsive line” into motion — ensuring the animation extended the work rather than reinterpreting it.