William Trubridge, an 18-time world record breaking freediver, and fellow diver, actress and partner Sachiko Fukumoto are the ones projected on the fountain. Sachiko Fukumoto is projected in this image. Photo / Jono Tucker
William Trubridge, an 18-time world record breaking freediver, and fellow diver, actress and partner Sachiko Fukumoto are the ones projected on the fountain. Sachiko Fukumoto is projected in this image. Photo / Jono Tucker
The Trubridge family has combined its love of art, light and free diving together to create a stunning video projection on a fountain on Wellington's waterfront.
The Performance Arcade artistic director Sam Trubridge, along with his brother and free diver William Trubridge, have worked together to develop the display on Oriental Bay's Carter Fountain.
"Swimmers" follows the success of Swans in 2019, and is part of the Performance Arcade festival.
Until the festival's conclusion on March 2, the harbour will come to life each night from 9pm to 12am with a 10-metre projection of moving divers on to a wall of water cast by the fountain out to sea.
The festival is a free live art event on Wellington's waterfront, run for the past nine years.
"The fountain in Oriental Bay has a really unique placement: it presents itself to the terraced houses on the steep slopes of Tangi-te-Keo (Mount Victoria)," Sam said.
"In this way it is possible to turn a whole suburb into an auditorium, and the harbour into a stage for this special video performance."
William Trubridge, an 18-time world record breaking freediver, and fellow diver, actress and partner Sachiko Fukumoto are the ones projected on the fountain.
He said that the display comes from their "shared creativity and love for the ocean".
Last year Wellington Harbour was lit up with Royal New Zealand Ballet dancers Abigail Boyle and Sara Garbowski dancing excerpts from Fokine's The Dying Swan and Mário Rádačovsky's Black Swan, White Swan.
But last year wasn't the first time this has happened, though — in 1984 Joe Bleakley and Russell Collins projected on to the fountain for the Sun Festival which Sam says is the reason they were able to continue the display today.
"I would not be doing this without their precedent and their loan of the fixture that made this possible 36 years ago."
The video display can be seen right across the Wellington Harbour. Photo / Jono Tucker
For something like this to come to life it takes a lot of work and Sam says it's the "hardest part" to try and get a good display.
"You have to consider a lot of very exacting variables to do with engineering, light and weather.
"The weather always holds our process up to some degree, if it is above 10 knots then we can't use the fountain because it blows salt water on to the houses and cars in Oriental Bay," he said.
"So sometimes we are waiting up to 1am for the wind to drop so we can test the work."
But he said that to get to what they have now is not just the effort of himself, William and his partner but a team to get it together.
"Japanese champion free diver Ryuzo Shinomiya shot the footage in Okinawa, and video artist Amber Strain has been working tirelessly on preparing the video material and project it on to the fountain."
