PEOPLE took to Bendigo’s CBD for the first night of Enlighten on Wednesday night.
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The projection festival kicked off at 6pm, featuring 19 arts projects throughout Bendigo.
It is a locally-driven festival that aims to create opportunities for central Victorian artists and engage diverse communities.
WATCH: Faces of Yapenya at the Conservatory (story continues below)
This is the second time the city has hosted the event, following on from 2016.
Enlighten will run from August 29 to 31 before it merges with White Night on September 1.
Four projects might be slightly difficult to track down during Enlighten.
Mobile art installations will move each night and provide visitors to the Bendigo CBD with some intimate artworks.
Map of event (story continues below)
Along Hargreaves Street each night, Lorraine Brigdale will using a projector set up in her backpack to fix artwork and animation on any surface she can find.
When she tested the equipment on Tuesday night, she was blown away by it.
“I was quite speechless and couldn’t sleep afterwards. I was like a kid at Christmas and just kept thinking ‘I’m so glad I'm an artist’,” she said.
“One thing about festival, is that everything up there is larger than life, it’s easy for people to see the art. It brings it to the public.
“But with this (backpack projection) it’s the opposite scale. It’s much more person to person and feels very intimate.
“To project things onto something small puts it in a whole new context.”
Ms Brigdale’s animation developed from her time living in Delhi.
“As a foreigner (in another country) I experienced what I expect other cultures experience in Australia when trying to merge with our lifestyle. I wanted to a tell story about that,” she said.
“I got a mix of multicultural artists to draw what they thought of their culture. Then I took those and made stop motion animation of images from six different cultures.
“It is set in a gum tree with each individual culture starting off the same before becoming its own (leaf).”
Along Bull Street, Akhila Fernando will bring the Sandakada Pahana Naagaraksha Dance Elephant’s Story to life while at the Mundy end of Hargreaves Street Colours and Form by Rachel Doughty will take place.
ACT Natimuk – a Wimmera-based community theatre goup – will host the Pop-Up Poppet in a different area each night.
The group will use the Rosalind Park Poppet Head in an arts project in October.
Creative producer Greg Pritchard said their 1.9 metre scale model of steel and nylon on wheels and would have shadow based projections on it.
“This is a great thing that’s happening in Bendigo and we wanted to support the program,” he said.
“It is also a good way to talk to people we don’t normally see about the project we have in October.”
Paul Fletcher’s tree-based projection is branching out
Paul Fletcher’s Enlighten projection is encouraging people to look at the world around them.
His installation – titled Circular Horizon – will show on a one-metre circular screen set in a tree in the Library Gardens.
His 10-minute work represents the sun and the moon and how they link people across the world.
“A common experience that people have is the sun and the moon,” he said.
“It uses images of the sun and the moon as well as other understandings and association attached to (those themes).
“I saw the opportunity to do something that is small but just as interesting. It’s an unusual thing that hopefully appeals people who have a keen eye on their surroundings.”
Fletcher’s installation is accompanied by a soundtrack by Richard Frankland.
“People can access the soundtrack by downloading a code that is one the tree,” he said.
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