Erth at Vivid
Gavin Smith
Working on large scale outdoor events eventually becomes manageable in size the more we do it. The Vivid Festival in Sydney is no small event by any means, and neither are the life size flying dinosaurs made by Erth Physical and Visual Inc.
The producers of the event wanted an interactive installation at one of the live sites to include a way for the audience to participate and have a creative input into the installation. Firstly, the Erth artists designed the conceptual and aesthetic aspects of the installation. Secondly, our part of the process was to design and source all the mechanical and rigging aspects of the flying system for the dinosaurs to fly by wire. With the adaptive use of encoders from the high speed winches, we installed them on 2 exercise bikes that controlled the winches and ultimately the raising and lowering of the birds on the winch lines.
It was a huge success, and apart from the technically challenging aspects of taking an idea from a thought and making it happen, we'd be up for the challenge to do it again.
