Celebrating the People’s House
The People’s House: Sydney Opera House at 50
Sydney, Australia
Art Processors collaborated with Museums of History NSW to create an interactive exhibition at the Museum of Sydney celebrating the Sydney Opera House in its 50th year, highlighting its significance in the cultural and social life of the city and the nation.
The Sydney Opera House has played host to rockers, rappers and pop stars, stand-up comedians, bodybuilders, dancers and DJs, presidents, royalty and a pope or two—and more operas and orchestras than you can shake a conductor’s baton at. It’s everyday people however, who have shaped the iconic landmark into today’s vibrant civic space and place of shared memories.
Art Processors worked closely with the Museum of Sydney team to deliver the exhibition’s creative concept of 'the people’s house' and devised four original interactives that created space for play, experimentation and delight.
A place of shared memories
We are delighted to help celebrate a milestone anniversary for this architectural masterpiece and beacon of artistic expression. We wanted to celebrate the spirit of the House and its enduring legacy in bringing an extraordinary diversity of experience to the whole community. We’ve had great joy in looking back and bringing those many thousands of performances to life again, but also in giving people a chance to imagine and shape what the next 50 years could be.
– Martyn Killion, Chief Operating Officer, Museums of History NSW.
The four interactive installations—Maestro, On This Day, The Drafting Table, and Thanks For The Memories—used interactive and motion-control technology including smart motion-sensing cameras, live generative audio and visuals, AI, and data visualisation to creatively involve visitors in the exhibition. The Drafting Table invites visitors to pick up a stylus and try their hand at design or unlock the secrets behind the building’s unique design while Art Processors’ conversational AI unobtrusively comments on their efforts. On This Day enabled visitors to view hundreds of past performances at the Opera House and they could submit their personal reminiscences to Thanks For The Memories, a digital wall of memories now preserved in the public archives.
Maestro, an immersive audio-visual environment where visitors control music and visuals through their body movements, occupied all of Gallery 1 and was the most challenging, yet exciting, interactive to develop. Inspired by the work of an orchestra conductor, visitors step into a zone where their physical movements—deliberate gestures or spontaneous dances—directly shape and create the music and imagery around them. This innovative use of motion-capture technology transforms the visitor from a passive viewer into an active performer, blurring the lines between audience and artist as they controlled the volume, melody, harmony, and rhythm of the sound, effectively composing music with their gestures.
What does a conductor do? They lead the musicians through gestures. This is an abstract artistic projection that senses visitors' interaction and translates that data into simpler forms in defined zones - such as a string section in an orchestral or the drum beat in a contemporary piece. We want people to play, we want this to be a moment to spark creativity.
– Julien de Sainte-Croix, Creative Technologist, Art Processors
The framing for this exhibition as ‘The People’s House’ has been a fascinating lens through which to view the past 50 – really 65 years – of the Sydney Opera House. Art Processors has delivered curation, exhibition and interactive design and development, in collaboration with the Museum of History NSW’s staff, to co-create an exhibition that will form a wonderfully memorable experience that will evoke wonder, nostalgia and reverie.
– Sam Doust, Creative Director, Art Processors
