Sam Whiteside: Contact

Overview

Vivid Sydney is here for 2022, brightening up as many places around the city as it can manage — and turning almost every walk around town into a glowing experience. Here's another way to soak up the luminous sights while making the most of the citywide fest: hitting up Carriageworks for free installation Contact.

The work of light artist Sam Whiteside, this immersive piece includes a monolithic lightwork, complete with thick haze and an intense white and red beam of brightness. If it sounds a tad trippy and also a bit eerie, that's by design. Using algorithmically generated simulations, those shafts of light pulse through the space — distorting your sense of reality.

On display from 5–11.30pm on Thursday, June 2–Friday, June 3 and Thursday, June 9–Saturday, June 11 — plus from 5–9.30pm on Sunday, June 5 — Contact also comes with a drone soundscape composed and produced by Patrick Liney. So, it finds another way to steep you in its confines.

Another key factor: Carriageworks' architecture, and the shadows that Contact casts among its walls.

Images: Jacquie Manning.