Trio to shine their light on Oz art festival

A REAL BUZZ: Darklit Design's Courtney, Steve and Di Norman's light installation proposal has been accepted for the Sydney Vivid Festival.

A creative Masterton trio is building a light sculpture that will be seen by almost one million people at Sydney's Vivid Festival in May.

A proposal by Darklit Design, made up of Di and Steve Norman and their daughter Courtney, has been accepted for the 18-day-festival of light, music and ideas, the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

There are 59 installations in this year's festival with two from New Zealand but they are the only Kiwis to be showing a light installation, which they call Colour Fall.

Mrs Norman said it was a reasonably large installation, made up of a sphere of suspended leaves, lit up in autumn colours in a progressive sequence to represent the autumn fall.

Mr Norman said it was a real buzz to get into the festival especially being from "little old Masterton".

It shows we can perform against the bigger guys, he said.

"We were stoked."

They have laser cut 66 leaves and started constructing a three-metre wide sphere but there is still a lot of work to be done, said Mrs Norman.

"It's really exciting but also daunting at the same time."

Miss Norman, who came up with the concept, said it was a big deal for her.

"It was my top milestone I was going to get to and now I'm there."

She said one of the biggest tasks is programming the sequence of lights and using bare materials to make it look natural.

"The challenge is taking something quite industrial and hard and trying to soften it with light."

Mrs Norman said the idea was to build on their last installation, Tracing Transience, a series of illuminated flying birds, which was installed in Kuripuni Village as part of the Kokomai creative festival.

It was also shown at the Wellington LUX light festival and the Art in the Dark festival in Auckland.

Mrs Norman said they were extending their limits for this installation but it was worthwhile.

"We adapt each time we do something new. We are learning in huge bounds.

They have been to Vivid before as visitors and said it gets bigger every year - last year, 800,000 people went.

Miss Norman said a lot of money goes into the festival and it gives them valuable exposure.

"One of the light projections onto the Sydney Opera House costs more than the whole LUX festival."

The trio said ultimately, Darklit Design would like to get commissioned work as it is an expensive to enter festivals.

They have been asked to show Colour Fall at Lux this year.

Miss Norman said it was great to be invited rather than having to submit a proposal.

"Obviously we made a bit of an impact," said Mr Norman.

Mrs Norman said they were aiming to get the installation finished over Easter.

They also have their other business Laser Electrical Wairarapa to take care of. "We are trying to make sure we don't overwhelm ourselves."