day 5: a day full of colour, light, and sound

The Luminarium - Levity II - Architects of Air


The Luminarium is one of the trippiest things I have done in a long time. The Luminarium is an "all-encompassing kaleidoscope of liquid light, gentle surround-sound and living psychedelic colour." There are four Luminariums in the world, Levity II is one of them. Picture your typical bounce-house. Now get ride of the netting, and the bounce aspect. Now make it 800 square meters and with multiple rooms, hallways, tunnels, and nooks. Now imagine it designed as an architectural and geometric piece of art. The Luminarium is designed to capture the beauty of natural light through its hand-cut and hand-glued colored plastic walls. (Designed by Architects of Air.) Becca, Laura, Neha and I had waited in line for an hour to get in and it was worth every minute. We were inside for an hour and had a field-day taking pictures.




All Star World Percussion Spectacular.

This performance was in the Sydney Myer Music Bowl, the same venue where I saw Miriam Makeba. When we saw Miriam Makeba we sat in the back, in the grass, with plenty of space around us and it was very relaxed. We assumed that we would be able to do a similar thing again. Boy were we wrong. We got to the Sydney Myer Music Bowl around 7:30, the time the concert was going to start, and by the time we got inside the place was absolutely packed. There were solid people all the way to where we had spread ourselves out before. Here is a picture:


So we sat on a grassy hill to the side where you couldn't see the stage at all. And then eventually moved to the other side where there was some space on the edge. The performance was spectacular. Nine different percussion groups performed. Each of them did three pieces the middle of which included percussion students from master-classes that these groups have been conducting (college-age, not young kids). We saw: Nexus (Canada), Evelyn Glennie (Scotland- yes mum and dad... I *did* get to see her, and I thought of you!), The Dhol Foundation (England/India), Synergy (Australia), Scrap Arts Music (Canada- they were really cool; all of their instruments are made out of industrial scraps... things such as monkey bar pieces), Liam Teague (Trinidad & Tobago), Talvin Singh (England/India), The Kusum Ensemble (Ghana) and The Renegades Steel Orchestra (Trinidad & Tobago), who got the entire crowd to their feet and dancing. Here is another shot of the massive crowd (*before* the Renegades Steel Orchestra did their thang):


Shenzo's Electric Stunt Orchestra

After the All Star World Percussion Spectacular concert we headed down to the river to catch the last "sound and light" show of the night. On the way we crossed paths with the aerial rig and saw the last few minutes of these guys' show. They are absolutely nuts. They play string instruments and fly through the air simultaneously. Upside down... swinging... and playing crazy-ass music.


And then... the pictures so much don't do the event justice that I'm not even putting one up, but the spectacle is... spectacular. Every hour, on the hour, from 8:00pm to 11:00pm there is what I think they call the "sound and light" show on the river. To a miscellaneous assortment of music, the 72 giant metal fish along the river light-up, and spout water; and light-patterns are projected on the (spouting) water. It's only a 10 minute "show" but the river at night, plus the magic of coloured lights, plus the monstrous metal fish, plus the water timed to music, all for as far as you can see... makes for a pretty awesome scene.