Kari Kola pops into Albany to iron out final details for 2026 Lighting The Sound light show record attempt

The mastermind behind the 2026 lightshow set to break a world record in Albany made his penultimate visit to the city last week, fine-tuning plans for the bicentenary display set to be seen from space.

Light artist Kari Kola travelled from his native Finland earlier this month to iron out the final details of his mammoth Lighting The Sound project, set to run for three weekends next March.

Covering about 1000ha, the red and green installation will span 15km of Torndirrup National Park and will be filmed from space.

Kola hopes to “paint” a blanket of green across the land surrounding King George Sound via a network of 800 lights, dotted with 15 light towers that will shoot red roots into the sky.

Speaking to the Advertiser on October 1, Kola said initial ideas involved lighting up Albany’s twin hills — Mt Melville and Mt Clarence — before a visit to the city and consultation with residents sealed Torndirrup as the location.

“I didn’t know that much about Australian history but we were scouting possible places, possible concepts, and then I heard a story about the bloodroot and the local Menang people,” he said.

“So I was thinking that I want to combine the 200 years and, like, 30,000 years, so it’s like the ancient times and this time.

“I asked, can we find (the bloodroot)? So I ate it and tasted it and then I got this idea that this is the concept for the artwork, the source.

“This is combining the area because the plant is only here in the planet (and) Menang people, (who) are only here in the planet.

“We are only doing this in here, so it is real site-specific work.”

Kola is aiming to break his own world record, for the largest outdoor light installation, that was exhibited at Connemara in Ireland in 2020.

Kola will return to Albany in February to oversee the project’s construction.

He predicts crews will take about two weeks to put up the scaffolding, and electricians one week to organise the power network, before the technical team begin preparations two to three days before the event.

However, a keen attention to detail is required throughout the entirety of its run, according to Kola, who said careful adjustments would be made to the focus of each light beam depending on weather conditions.

“This is more like creating a painting than a light work,” he said.

“You have to focus quite a bit on the shadow, to get it as much 3-D as possible, and that’s going to take time on this kind of scale.

“And if it’s, like, a foggy day, we can focus because you don’t see anything.

“So always better playing with nature, like there’s lots of things that you have to adapt anyway.”

The project will be operated by Perth-based FORM, which will also co-ordinate several “audience zones” across the city that will be activated for the influx of tourists expected.