The Vivid Sydney Festival is one of the highlights of Sydney’s event calendar every year. For a few weeks as the temperature drops, Sydney bathes itself in a melange of colour from citywide light and art installations, many with an interactive element to entice the public. This year, Samsung is involved as a principal sponsor for the first time and is planning to bring a bit of fun to the Sydney Opera House and Luna Park over the course of the festival.
Samsung’s installation, The Night. Reimagined. is a huge two-storey installation in the Sydney Opera House’s forecourt, facing onto Sydney Harbour. The title hooks directly into the company’s marketing campaign for the Galaxy S9, and Samsung is promising plenty of grammable content within.
Visitors will be offered a choice of two paths through the sprawling installation, which features 2km of LED strip lights and is sure to be a highlight of the festival.
With one path taking them through the AR Emoji and Super Slow Motion features of the Galaxy S9 – both features we had a great time using (check out our review here for more details and samples) – and the other with some fun lights and sound on offer.
The new face of Luna Park
While getting to know the AR Emoji feature, visitors will be able to use the Galaxy S9 to create their own AR Emoji and it’ll be projected onto Sydney’s iconic Luna Park – famously reluctant to change the face of the iconic structure over its 83-year history.
You’ll also be able to test out the Galaxy S9’s Super Slow Motion feature with an exhibit featuring chrome-plated balls bursting into the air around you – combined with the lights of Vivid, this should make for an impressive sight.
Sights and Sounds
Once you’ve had your (AR Emoji) face up in lights, there’ll still be plenty to do and see – there are a number of light and sound exhibits inside Samsung’s installation with names like Twilight Glow, Southern Lights, Starry Skies and Cosmic Flares.
Samsung promises each one will help you reimagine the night (our guess is they’d prefer you reimagine it with a brand new Galaxy S9, and that’s hard to advise against).
You’ll also get your own digital souvenir pack with images and selfies you took at the exhibits, and a picture of your AR Emoji as projected onto Luna Park.
We can’t wait to see it.
Wanna be first?
If this all sounds like fun (and let’s face it, Vivid is fantastic fun to attend and snap some pics), and you’d like to head along then Samsung’s running a competition for you to be the among first to experience their Vivid installation on May 25. The prize consists of a trip to Vivid Sydney for 4 people (flights and accomodation) and some Samsung goodies including a Galaxy S9 each, DeX, Gear VR, Gear 360 and a Galaxy Book.
You can enter at your local Samsung store, or visit Samsung’s Vivid minisite for all the details and entry.
I was really looking forward to going to Luna Park this year for Vivid festival. The idea came to me about a month ago.
Hearing of Samsungs involvement has honestly ruined it for me. I’m there the see the lights and Sydney not advertising and gimmicks.
P.S. I own an S8, I’m not a Samsung hater but this sort of corporate sponsorship is not needed and ruins events like Vivid. ?
Corporate sponsorship for a public festival is good.
Abusing it for public corporate and product spamvertising on the festival is the problem.
Some nice Samsung gear if you win.
Out of that lot what I’d likely use the least would be the Samsung Galaxy Book. It’s size and formfactor aren’t quite as easily portable as my Samsung Galaxy Tab A (2016) 10.1 4G with S Pen.
Also, notice what’s missing from the prize merch bundle, no actual tablet. It’s spot is being taken by the Galaxy Book.