The coloured light projected onto the building in the photo is part of Vivid, the annual night-time light festival held in Sydney, Australia. The festival lasts a month and the organisers aim to enthral, and sometimes provoke, the thousands of people who flock to the city to see the lights.
This particular projection of trees and owls is a rural scene that contrasts with the traffic, roads and buildings of cities like Sydney. From our point of view as geographers it shows how artistic media — in this case colour and light used in a public location — can address important themes. The projection invites viewers to ponder the way humans degrade the natural world (the trees are denuded of leaves, with a strange purple growth in their place, the owls bearing witness to an unhealthy forest). It also reminds urban dwellers that life in cities is dependent on using resources from rural areas, such as timber and fresh water (many big cities take their water from rural reservoirs).
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