VIVID Sydney Lighting of the Sails (Metamathemagical)
Large-scale projection and animation system for digital artwork
For Vivid Sydney’s 10th anniversary, we collaborated with artist Jonathan Zawada to bring his Metamathemagical concept to life on the Sydney Opera House sails.
The project translated Zawada’s digital kinetic sculptures into a large-scale animated work — combining artistic intent with a new level of technical precision and clarity.
The Brief
As the centrepiece of Vivid Sydney — and marking the festival’s 10th anniversary — the Lighting of the Sails required a work that could operate at both artistic and architectural scale.
Working alongside Jonathan Zawada, the brief was to translate complex digital artworks into a projection that would retain their form, movement and detail across one of the world’s most iconic surfaces.
The Experience
Metamathemagical unfolds as a sequence of hyperreal, evolving forms inspired by Australian flora and fauna — blending natural reference with abstract, digital interpretation.
Zawada’s kinetic sculptures were brought into motion, transforming the Opera House into a constantly shifting composition of organic structures and surreal landscapes.
The result was a visually striking experience that emphasised movement, clarity and detail — allowing audiences to engage with digital artwork at a scale and fidelity rarely seen in projection.
The Build
Animation of artist-supplied Blender assets into large-scale projection content
Early cloud-based rendering pipeline enabling rapid production at scale
High-fidelity output (4K @ 50fps — significantly exceeding prior years’ standards)
Custom projection mapping templates developed with TDC
Pipeline designed to preserve detail and motion across complex geometry
To meet the demands of both timeframe and scale, we built a new production approach — combining cloud rendering and projection system design to deliver higher quality output while maintaining flexibility.
The projection template developed for this project continues to inform how content is delivered to the Opera House today.