Sydney Vivid MailboX Display 2017

Help our team light up the night skies of Sydney for Vivid 2017!
(26 May – 17 June) 

This display will be built to inspire individuals to be more positively connected by verbal and written conversation as social media has made us into antisocial beings due to the abundance of communication platforms. Receiving a letter from a good friend used to be common practice but sadly we are forgetting the importance of written correspondence.

Our MailboX team are in need of extra funding as our previous sponsorship will not cover the full amount needed to create such a complicated and large scale project. We had originally intended to create one small MailboX but decided due to the nature of Vivid that a larger one would have a greater impact. We intend to build it to the highest quality so that it may be relocated to other cities or even countries to inspire people everywhere. MailboX uses the traditional shape of a post box, with a laser cut letter shaped façade and illuminated with LED lights in order to recreate messages into entertaining interactions. For this iteration we have chosen to use Emojis as they are a modern rebirth of Hieroglyphics – an early form of written communication - and create a contrast between the traditional post box and letter shape that allow the viewer to question the importance of written communication and how we are slowly losing that capability.

MailboX begins its journey in the present, with the modern day form of a letter. Twitter is limited to 140 characters which is similarly reflected in the limitation you get in writing and sending a letter. A participant can tweet to the mailbox their experiences while at the Vivid festival. This message will then be transformed into a digital form of a letter that is posted through the traditional method of letter transportation -  the humble mailbox. The concerns previously ignored by social media protocol will now no longer stay dormant and will generate interactive communication and solutions.

The fun of reconnecting socially is captured using the modern form of Heiroglyphics, the emoji, to display the letter on the façade of the box, encouraging others to interact in minimum time thereby accelerating the thrill of the old fashioned written word communication.

If the tweeted message meets the secret criteria set by the team, then a recreation of the message will be display on the facade with the accompanying users Twitter handle.  Using game-design principles the creators have reinstated the joy of communication by augmenting the representation of a post box with the current advances in computing and LED lighting technologies to display the emoji’s tweeted during Vivid located around the MailboX.

More Information:
- https://www.vividsydney.com/event/light/mailbox

- http://www.mailboxsydney.com

How will the funds be used?

-       Help pay for assistance in the make and build of the internal aluminium façade $2500

-       Help pay for the wooden materials of middle façade $1800

-       Help pay for the materials of a light diffusing layer (polyproperline) $1500

-       Help pay for the materials of the external envelope façade $1300

-       Allow us to lazer cut the envelopes of the external façade $1000

-       Obtain an Engineering certificate $1000

Total: $9100
(we have already been lucky enough to secure some funding from vivid but these funds would be used to help us comeplete the rest of the project that the inital funds did not cover)

Thank you from our team to you!
For all your  support and we hope to see you there at 6pm on the 26th of May for our big launch.


Team Power Rangers: Yellow - Anthony Zeater, Navy - James Rotanson, Red - Steven Bai, Purple - Isabella Bain, Blue - Christopher Simpson

The Build to date: