The Electric Canvas Keeps Festivals Burning Bright Across Australia and Beyond

The Electric Canvas’ festival season has been one of the busiest that the company has seen throughout its 27-year history, with large-scale and architectural projections featuring strongly at both new and recurring events around the region.

After kicking off 2024 with the Australia Day Live broadcast at the Sydney Opera House, TEC was off to Hong Kong for the third edition of the ‘InnerGlow’ festival at the historic Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts. This year, another precinct was added to the lighting and projection event, expanding from the Parade Ground and opening up the Prison Yard for a new initiative, ‘InnerGlow Searchlight’. Supported by the experience of The Electric Canvas, this student mentoring program provides the opportunity for artists and students to become involved in architectural projection mapping. A call-out to art and performance institutions yielded an enthusiastic response from a variety of applicants, including design and animation students, established artists, sound designers and performance artists. The proponents were a mix of individuals and groups, gathered from like-minded friends and colleagues.

The Electric Canvas provided the applicants with three architectural opportunities of varying complexity, including an impressive prison wall some 60m wide by 10m high, a complex two-story Prison Block façade, and a simpler, gabled end wall with minimal architectural features. The rules were simple: use and play with the architecture; treating facades simply as screening surfaces would not be acceptable. After receiving proposals from each respondent of the call-out, TEC and Tai Kwun conducted a series of interviews to identify a shortlist, before selecting the final contributors and assigning them each a façade, based on their creative idea and skills. Two of the facades also allowed proponents to work with multisource sound. The contributing groups were given a timeline and a series of briefing and mentoring sessions to assist them in achieving their visions in this new and challenging medium.

Once the equipment was in place in the week leading up to InnerGlow 2024, each group was given two opportunities to view and hear their work in-situ. This was a pivotal moment, as they suddenly realised what their mentors had been preaching. The first viewing session was set up so that the artists could undertake on-site sound mixing using timecode synchronisation to maximise the theatrical qualities of their piece. Each group took copious notes and spent the next 48 hours refining their work – often with very little sleep – before returning to the Prison Yard for one more look.

Without exception, the artists and groups delivered outstanding fresh works that were enjoyed by all. For TEC, the InnerGlow Searchlight program was one of the most satisfying initiatives the company has been involved with.

Back home, The Electric Canvas continued its epic 14-year tenure to refine the way it delivers Canberra’s annual Enlighten Festival.

Although the 2024 festival saw the usual installation at six significant buildings in the Parliamentary Triangle, TEC continues to iterate and to improve delivery with new projector and media server technology, as well as improved site infrastructure and methodologies. This is one of the few annual events that didn’t suffer a Covid-induced gap-year, due to extraordinary flexibility from TEC’s team and the organisers.

Enlighten is a unique festival model, with The Electric Canvas working directly with the various institutions to deliver new bespoke content onto each of their façades. Their contribution spans from giving expert advice to commissioned creatives, to providing template and architectural guidance, to animating supplied static assets to create new animated works.

One such commission for this year’s Enlighten was to work with the National Gallery of Australia and its assigned artist for 2024, Vincent Namatjira OAM. Namatjira’s ‘Australia in Colour’ exhibition within the Gallery was due to open at the same time as Enlighten, so the NGA briefed The Electric Canvas to create an animated piece for the exterior of this huge brutalist design building. TEC’s artists and animators set to work animating several portraits and paintings from the collection to produce ‘Indigenous All Stars’, in some cases adding missing limbs and features cropped from the original mounted pictures. The artist himself was asked to create a bespoke background scene using a special large-scale building template supplied by TEC. This background was then pathed, dissected and “healed” into separate complete layers of mountains, hills and trees that could be 2D animated to create depth and perspective. One scene, depicting the actual ‘Australia in Colour’ exhibition, featured football players breaking out of their picture frames to join a game of footy on the façade. The artist voice narrated the piece, which was accompanied by a music track from local musicians around Indulkana/Iwantja, South Australia, near Vincent’s home and studio.

Both the Gallery and the artist were thrilled with the outcome, with the piece proving one of the most popular of the festival.

Up the hill at Australian Parliament House, The Electric Canvas produced a fun piece based on the extensive Lego model of the house and its inner workings that is on public display. The façade of the Great Veranda was reconstructed using Lego bricks that were rigged to perform animated cutaways and collapses to help transition the narrative. With the assistance of APH stakeholders, TEC directed a macro photo shoot of the model to capture the depiction of both houses of parliament in session. Hours of painstaking work was undertaken to deep etch the various Lego figures, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate. Backgrounds were restored where each figure had been removed, so the figures could be composited back in and animated with basic movement. The soundtrack was comprised of a bespoke music track with actual, sometimes raucous, recordings from both Houses. Again, the stakeholders, and the public, were delighted with the result of this playful projection.

TEC looks forward to Enlighten 2025, its fifteenth, and is already working on ideas.

Perth’s month-long Boorloo Heritage Festival hosts a variety of events throughout the month of April and, this year, celebrated some significant anniversaries, including 120 years of His Majesty’s Theatre on Hay Street. To mark the occasion, The Electric Canvas was invited to design and deliver a mapped projection titled ‘Into the Limelight’ onto the Theatre’s intricate grand façade.

A highlight of the festival, the projections portrayed the Theatre’s relationship with its surroundings over the past twelve decades.

TEC worked in close collaboration with the City of Perth’s cultural heritage team to develop a number of scenes covering subjects such as the theatre’s historical significance, memorable productions that have graced its stage, and the venue’s resident performing arts companies. Hundreds of visual assets – photos of Hay Street at the turn of the 20th century, show posters and programs, and images of the theatre’s famous architectural features – were woven into original content designed by The Electric Canvas. The visual sequence was set to an accompanying soundtrack comprised of familiar and bespoke music, as well as an excerpt from the WA Opera’s ‘Wundig wer Wilura’ by Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse.

TEC made an early start on the project’s technical pre-production in November 2023 by LiDAR scanning the theatre’s façade and undertaking a preliminary projection study to map the complex architecture. The projections were to cover the entire Hay Street span of the building as well as wrap around the corner 20 metres to the King Street exit doors.

Given the limited throw distance due to the narrow two-lane Hay Street and the deep shopfront awnings opposite, projection towers on the footpath were ruled out.

TEC found a workable solution by taking advantage of the shop awnings themselves.

This approach elevated the projectors to a satisfactory height that avoided deep shadows on the building. It was also aesthetically ideal, rendering the streetscape completely void of infrastructure. However, this approach raised the question of whether the awnings were structurally sound enough to bear the weight of the equipment and crew, as well as whether the building owners would actually consent to their use.

Consent initially proved elusive until, finally, in early February, the City received permission for their engineers to inspect the awnings. A mere six weeks before bump-in, the engineers gave their green light, albeit with a number of additional infrastructure requirements and, at last, production could get properly underway.

Time was tight to design and produce the animated, architecturally keyed content. Thankfully, TEC’s creative team had been able to commence some work in the meantime, developing the storyboard, as well as selecting and preparing the many visual assets supplied by the City for integration into the piece.

Following the engineers’ sign off, TEC proceeded with their technical design utilising six Christie Crimson 31K laser-phosphor projectors installed in low-level compact enclosures, distributed along the top of the awnings directly opposite the theatre.

From a mapping standpoint, this was one of The Electric Canvas’ most demanding projects. The budget was extremely tight, as was the remaining timeframe, so there was no opportunity to commission a 3D model of the building. An accurate POV workflow was the only option for this complex facade. The original decorative verandahs and columns had been removed in the 1950s, but recently reinstated in a major renovation to the theatre. This made projector calibration and blending particularly challenging. TEC deployed its versatile Modulo Kinetic media server system to help develop and maintain an accurate line-up on the challenging architecture.

Despite the many obstacles that TEC’s team encountered along the pre-production route, the end result was truly impressive and the projections took pride of place at the Boorloo Festival’s grand finale.

Meanwhile, on the country’s east coast, the city of Ballarat was gearing up for its 10-day annual Heritage Festival in May. The Electric Canvas Melbourne was called upon to provide technical delivery for artist Craig Walsh’s work ‘Monuments’. The installation featured the faces of three well-known Ballarat locals, projected onto separate trees along the main thoroughfare of Sturt Street Gardens. ‘Monuments’ was a festival highlight, providing an engaging reason for locals and visitors to explore the city at night.

With the Ballarat Heritage Festival in full swing, TEC turned its attention to the fourth edition of Melbourne’s RISING Festival. The Electric Canvas has been involved in RISING since the festival’s inception in 2021. For 2024, Federation Square was home to ‘The Blak Infinite’, a site for the sharing of art and stories of First Peoples’ futures, connections to the cosmos and political discourse. The Electric Canvas was engaged to deliver projections onto the St Kilda Road and southern façades of the SBS building, the northern façade of the Birrarung building, and the southern façade of the ACMI building. The projection system consisted of some 16 31,000 lumen projectors, served by a Modulo Kinetic system. Content was designed by Studio Gilay, based on works by Gunditjmara, Keerray and Woorroong artist, Tarryn Love, and assisted by façade templates from TEC.

Across the Princess Bridge, Hamer Hall’s cylindrical façade became the canvas for Club Ate’s ‘In Muva We Trust’. This was the second occasion that The Electric Canvas has worked with Club Ate. A first iteration of the same work was developed in 2020 for the façade of the National Gallery of Australia for Enlighten Canberra. A late addition to the RISING program, ‘In Muva We Trust’ was green lit by the festival just two short weeks before opening night. In addition to the technical delivery of the show, TEC provided creative production support to Club Ate’s team by reworking the show for the barrel- shaped architecture of Hamer Hall, as well as incorporating new scenes and other design components under the artists’ direction.

In parallel with the set-up of RISING, the team headed back to regional Victoria. After a number of years in the White Night darkness, it was again Ballarat’s time to shine. Accolade Art had been awarded the project by Visit Victoria and had put together a huge array of visual and performance offerings for the people of Ballarat and its surrounding districts. This was the third White Night Ballarat that The Electric Canvas has been involved with, this time entirely staged out of their Tullamarine base. In consultation with Andrew Walsh, the event’s Artistic Director, no fewer than 12 facades were chosen and surveyed for projection. In addition to the selected building exteriors, Accolade made the late addition of the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the Mining Exchange hall. With the use of LiDAR scanning, this surface was also modelled for projection. The majority of the content was based on the works of local artists, compiled and animated by Accolade Art. The Electric Canvas deployed 14 projection structures, many fully clad, and some 28 high-powered projectors for the event. Few projects involve such a vast undertaking involving dozens of artists, contractors and stakeholders, road, traffic and police authorities, safety and traffic management contractors, City Council and utilities – all for a six-hour, one-night event. It was an extraordinary undertaking rewarded by a massive public turn-out of some 65,000 people on the chilly streets of Ballarat.

Meanwhile, in Canberra, The Electric Canvas was engaged for the second year running to design and deliver projections onto the Great Verandah of Australian Parliament House in celebration of both National Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week. This year’s projections were based on a stunning artwork by Arrernte, Luritja and Pintupi artist, Keturah Zimran OAM, entitled ‘Puli Puli – Rocks’. The TEC creative team developed a gently animated version of the original painting to emulate the gradual erosion and transformation of the landscape over time and highlight the inherent beauty of the natural world.

Immediately following the conclusion of RISING, the Melbourne team moved onto the set up of projections onto the clock entrance façade of Flinders Street Station. TEC has been called upon on several occasions to assist in the promotion of major events supported by the Victorian Government, such as the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the National Hockey League’s first ever match in Australia, or Taylor Swift kicking off her Eras tour in Melbourne. Next on the agenda was the National Rugby League’s 2024 State of Origin series, with the second match of the celebrated rivalry between New South Wales and Queensland being battled out at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the first time since 2018. TEC delivered the technical installation in addition to designing the projection content for this important activation for the NRL and the state of Victoria.

The final stop on The Electric Canvas’ whirlwind series of winter projects will be the annual Winter Wonderlights event at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, which runs for three weeks across Victoria’s school holiday period.

Winter Wonderlights is TEC’s most extensive project at a single site, both from a technical and creative delivery point of view. 2024 marks the tenth year that the company has delivered the projections, since being approached to help Sovereign Hill with the development of the event in 2014 with just six weeks’ notice. Starting with projection mapping and developing themed animations for 12 of Main Street’s facades that first year, the projection coverage has grown to a total of 28 facades and a content repertoire of 20 themed animated scenes to choose from. Each year, the 15-minute projection loop, which also incorporates other special effects such as faux snow and sparklers, utilises a selection of themes from the existing repertoire and introduces a new one. This year’s is a cheeky dragon who snakes his way along the buildings and pops up to the rooftops every now and then to let out a ‘puff’ of real fire.

Sovereign Hill is committed to providing its visitors with an accurate experience of the mid-1800s, so the design and installation of the projection system along Main Street needs to comply with this philosophy.

It is essential to keep the 33 projectors strategically concealed as much as possible from public view, whilst also using projector locations that allow for optimal unobstructed coverage and image resolution. The constrained (and often non-existent) space between individual buildings makes finding suitable projector locations a challenge and any visible structures are dressed on-brand with the general Sovereign Hill experience. The company has continually refined and improved projector placement for the event and, as the installation has to take place during the Museum’s opening hours, TEC’s crew is required to work discretely, so as not to disrupt the site’s daily activities, including live horse operations.

The most technically complex and demanding of The Electric Canvas’ annual commitments, Winter Wonderlights currently requires 33 channels of synchronised HD playback from five server clusters, with a full 33 channels of hot server backup for immediate failover should there be a technical issue.

In its first year, Winter Wonderlights increased the Museum’s gate from historic July attendance averages of around 10,000 visitors to more than 42,000. The event now draws an audience of up to 7,500 per night, with many repeat and multi-generational attendees. The 2023 edition welcomed more than 100,000 visitors and a repeat performance is expected this year.

Continuing into the latter half of 2024, TEC constantly strives to improve its services, methodology, technology and infrastructure. The company continues to accrue new projection, media server systems and delivery infrastructure, as well as to design and build new ways to house, protect and monitor equipment in the field. Bespoke fabrication remains the cornerstone of TEC’s ability to minimise site footprint and convert challenges into achievement.

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Main image: InnerGlow Searchlight work, “Jailhouse Follies” by Jerry Loo