Cindi Drennan is the Artistic Director and Co-founder of illuminart, an Australian artist-led studio that designs and delivers permanent projection and lighting works for landmarks and public places, creating reliable night-time cultural assets that operate year after year. illuminart brings together artists, producers, and technical specialists with deep experience across projection, digital media, public art, and large-scale project delivery.
Cindi noted working with Wollongong City Council on various urban activation projects, commenting that they have a strong interest in placemaking – the process of shaping public spaces so they are more welcoming, distinctive and connected to the people who use them.
“Over the years we have consulted several times for help with temporary activations and advice on permanent projection or lighting installations,” she said. “This specific project was proposed as a projection concept, but we recommended permanent gobo effects lighting as a better fit for the specific site.”
The site is a small laneway off Crown Street Mall that had previously been quite plain, and businesses wanted to do something to activate it more.
Wollongong City Council worked closely with tenants, property owners and local businesses to ensure there was general support for the project. Permanent projects like this also require considerable technical planning, especially when fixtures need to be attached to existing structures or buildings. Positioning, structural support, brackets, safety, wiring, power, and internet network access all needed to be considered.
Cindi and team worked with Wollongong company North End Builds to develop a plan for a specialised roof bracket, which was fabricated locally and installed, and the lights were attached to that bracket.
After researching several options, Cindi selected five Prolights Mosaico C5M exterior LED image projectors with a complete set of on-board effects, allowing for creative integration in any context, and the zoomable optics make it a versatile fixture for both near-field and long-throw installations.
“The gobos provide a great feeling and texture to uplift the laneway,” Cindi explained. “We would have preferred to create custom gobos, but the project didn’t quite have the resources for that, though in future perhaps it can be expanded. Instead, we reviewed the chosen fixture’s existing gobo pack, identified the options that best suited the area, and used them to program a looping sequence tailored to the space.”
The coastal environment was another important consideration. Wollongong’s proximity to the sea meant fixtures needed to be suitable for use in challenging saline environments.
“The C5M range is made with a marine-grade steel, so it’s just that extra level of robustness given the sort of environment that they’re being put into,” Cindi added. “It also helps protect the fixtures from the naughty cockatoos who want to bite them!”
To demonstrate that the Mosaico was a good, robust solution and, creatively, that it would work, Show Technology provided test lights and showed examples of the fixtures at work in other sites, such as Firehorse Lane in Parramatta.
“It was great to see the models at work in similar permanent contexts,” Cindi said. “Seeing them in place confirmed they could be rigged for our installation without significant complexity or structural issues.”
Cindi was very impressed by the beam angle zooming from 12.9° to 46.5°, which allows for flexible use and opens a new level of effects
“Because the lights point both up and down the laneway, the projection distance ranges from about 10 metres to as much as 80 metres,” she remarked. “And that’s a wide range to cover, but the Mosaicos are excellent.”
Despite some existing ambient light in the laneway, much of which is expected to be reduced as other precinct works are completed, the Mosaico’s light is extremely effective. The fixture is extremely bright, with over 11,667 lumens, crisp focus, and five layers of effects that allow for limitless combinations.
“It’s still cutting through the local lighting, and it’s adding a really nice ambience to the space, so I’m confident that it will continue to work really well, especially when those minor other changes are made to the precinct,” Cindi stated.
With seven rotating gobos and 14 colour filters on two colour wheels, the fixtures offered a variety of effects.
illuminart’s Senior Technical Director, Sarthak Sachdeva, engineered the control architecture for the Crown Lane lighting installation, developing a custom remote DMX interface that gives the client secure access to operate, configure, and monitor the system remotely while simplifying day-to-day management of the installation.
“If they decide to have all the lights in a specific pattern or colour for a night or a week, they can do all of that themselves,” elaborated Cindi. “They can choose to override the normal nightly program and run it a different way, or they can use the system for emergency or functional lighting or other types of event lighting when required.”
The Crown Lane installation is designed to provide more of an atmospheric addition to the lane rather than show entertainment. The default sequence is approximately 5 minutes of lighting projection, which plays on a loop running from sundown to sunrise. This means the formerly dark laneway offers pedestrians a vibrant, friendly activation. Cindi stressed that permanent installations are only successful in the long term if they’re properly maintained. illuminart has therefore planned the installation around an ongoing maintenance and support cycle, with the aim of ensuring the work remains reliable, attractive and useful well beyond its initial launch.
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