Solar-powered AV system brings life to interactive sculpture

Southern Cross University’s (SCU) solar-powered audio-visual system, the Sunflower, is heading to Vivid Sydney to join forces with the interactive light sculpture ‘Ray’. Designed and constructed by students, researchers and creative arts technicians at the SCU School of Arts and Social Sciences (SASS), the Sunflower is Australia’s largest solar-powered audio-visual production system.

Ray will be the first installation to be powered by renewable energy at the annual music and light festival. The 7 m tall sculpture, made up of strips of multicoloured light connecting to a base, is the brainchild of Pollinate Energy, an Australian social enterprise that installs solar lights in India’s urban slums.

A designer’s impression of Ray.

A whole host of design and creative teams have rallied behind Pollinate Energy to bring Ray to life for the Vivid festival, including SASS musicians and researchers Dr Barry Hill and Dr Matt Hill; sculpture designers amigo and amigo; creative data systems company S1T2; and experience-design duo Wildwon. Alexie Seller, national manager of business development and operations at Pollinate Energy, said the organisation wanted to work with specialist partners to make the Ray’s solar component a reality.

“We recognised immediately that we would need to do something innovative - putting panels on a roof somewhere just wasn’t going to cut it,” she said. “Along with Dr Barry Hill from SCU, we pulled in renewable energy and structural engineers from AECOM to provide expert engineering advice.”

Vivid attendees can interact with Ray by pulling on cords located in the charging pods, causing computer-animated light sequences to shoot towards the summit of the sculpture. Ray will gradually get fully charged from the coloured lights pouring in, culminating in a surge of sound, light and colour. A soundscape has been composed by Dr Barry Hill and Dr Matt Hill, which will be programmed to match the movement of the lights around the sculpture through a six-channel spatialised audio soundscape.

“This interactive design symbolises the way that the more our community engages with ideas around sustainability, the more energy will be put into developing innovating solutions to global energy and technology needs,” said Dr Barry Hill.

In collaboration with creative data programmer artist Kim O’Sullivan, the Sunflower has been installed with an interactive data network that enables SCU technicians to monitor information from the solar energy generation and production cycle via a mobile phone. And thanks to a Wi-Fi communication network that takes advantage of the Sunflower’s interactive data capabilities, festival-goers can interact with Ray to find out about his day via social media.

Ray will report on how he is feeling: loved or lonely, high or low on solar energy, happy or unhappy about air quality and pollution levels. He will also be collecting information at the installation site, including ambient weather data, amount of solar battery charge and number of public interactions.

Dr Barry Hill said the Sunflower project “highlights the creative possibilities of new media and sustainable energy technologies”.

“The aim is to develop a ‘think green’ ethos within the Australian creative arts industry and to promote best practice in solar and alternative power generation. Vivid strongly reflects the themes of the Sunflower solar audio research project, combining the perfect combination of music, light and a public festival for the Sunflower to get involved in - almost too good to be true.”

Vivid will be held on Sydney’s harbour foreshore from 23 May to 9 June.