Thousands of Children's Dreams Brought to Life at Vivid Sydney

As part of Vivid Sydney 2025, Mode Games partnered with the Sydney Children's Hospitals Foundation (SCHF) to create one of the festival's largest interactive installations. Supporting Vivid's theme of "Dream," the experience invited children and families to contribute their own dreams to an evolving digital world that celebrated creativity, hope and imagination.

Positioned within Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour, the installation featured a 10-metre by 2-metre LED display that continuously evolved throughout each evening. Rather than presenting a pre-rendered animation, the Dream Scene was a living digital world that grew and changed as visitors contributed artwork and interacted with the installation throughout the festival.
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Every Child Became Part of the Dream Scene

Children queued at one of several drawing stations, where they selected a themed template. Each template featured a simple icon representing the object their artwork would become within the Dream Scene, including birds, frogs, clouds and hearts.

Once completed, each drawing was photographed using a custom-built capture rig designed by Mode Games. Behind the scenes, custom software automatically detected and corrected the artwork's orientation before extracting the drawing and UV-mapping it onto a papercraft 3D model matching the selected template.

Within moments, each personalised creation appeared inside the live Dream Scene , joining hundreds of other visitor creations to form an ever-growing collaborative digital artwork.

The fully automated workflow enabled thousands of unique drawings to be processed throughout the event while maintaining an immediate and magical experience for every participant.

Visitors Transformed the Dream Scene  Using Their Own Phones

Participation with the Dream Scape also extended  beyond the drawing stations.

Any particpant could scan a nearby QR code using their own mobile phone and engage with the experience. Rather than downloading an app, visitors were presented with a series of options as interactive Dreams of the Future, each representing children's hopes and aspirations.

These included Stars Within Reach, Blueprints to Brilliance, Recipe for Greatness, Chasing Glory, and Heart of Healing. Selecting one instantly triggered a unique animated sequence across the giant LED display, transforming the Dream Scene through visual storytelling inspired by children's dreams for the future.

Visitors could also activate two large-scale environmental changes to the Dream Scene that affected the entire installation. Hope for the Future transformed stormy skies into sunshine, culminating in a symbolic rainbow stretching across the Dream Scene, while Look to the Stars transitioned the scene into a peaceful night sky illuminated ending with a shooting star.

These shared interactions encouraged complete strangers to collectively influence the installation, creating memorable moments for everyone gathered around the display.

Custom Technology Designed for Massive Public Participation

Creating an installation capable of supporting thousands of participants required far more than simply displaying artwork.

Mode Games designed and developed a complete end-to-end technology platform that combined custom artwork capture hardware, automated image processing with OpenCV, real-time rendering in Unity, cloud services and large-scale audience interaction into a seamless experience.

The drawing pipeline that was provided automatically photographed each artwork, then our software corrected its orientation, extracted the illustration and applied it directly onto animated papercraft 3D models before publishing the result into the live Dream Scene only moments later.

For mobile interaction, Mode Games developed a custom web app, this allowed for real-time participation platform that allowed any visitor to instantly influence the installation using nothing more than their mobile phone no download needed. Every interaction was transmitted live to the Dream Scene, enabling animations, environmental effects and visual changes to be synchronised across the massive LED display with minimal delay.

The platform was specifically engineered for high-demand public events where thousands of visitors could interact within a short period of time. By combining scalable cloud infrastructure with real-time messaging technology, the system ensured interactions remained immediate, reliable and responsive, even during peak periods. Individual mobile interactions became shared moments experienced simultaneously by the entire audience, creating an engaging large-scale collaborative experience.

A Living Artwork That Evolved Every Night

Unlike traditional digital displays, the Dream Scene continuously evolved throughout the festival as visitor artwork was contributed to the digital environment.

Every contribution became a part of the installation, encouraging families to participate, donate and watch the virtual world become richer and more vibrant with every kids drawing.

The combination of physical drawing, custom computer vision, automated content processing, real-time rendering and mobile audience participation created a unique interactive experience that celebrated imagination rather than competition.