Every evening, a dedicated team of creatives and technicians traverse 12 kilometres of rugged coastline to activate approximately 1000 individual LED lights, each turned on by hand. No computers are running this; just the ideas, enthusiasm, and effort of Finnish artist Kari Kola and his team, including local workers, illuminating Albany and bringing together the community for a shared experience.
Lighting the Sound, the large-scale installation co-designed and led by Menang Elders and the Albany community, and presented and produced by Finnish artist Kari Kola, is not a show you watch. It's one you settle into.
What you're actually looking at
Nothing here was set and forgotten. Every element of Lighting the Sound is manually calibrated on site, the result of specialist technical knowledge applied through weeks of iterative testing. Kola's process is responsive by design, with each light source continuously adjusted in real time to work alongside the weather, the landscape and the conditions of the night. In a world of instant everything, this work runs on human effort and deliberate slowness.
The lights direct your gaze outward from Albany’s Harbour, across King George Sound, toward the Southern Ocean. They shift with the weather. They change with the tide. Every angle offers something different, and the work tends to open up the longer you give it.
Five things to know before you go
Plan your trip: Arrive at ANZAC Peace Park or Stirling Terrace just before sunset to get the full cultural and geographic context of the experience. The light changes everything. Plan to visit more than once, from different spots along the harbour. The installation looks and feels completely different depending on your choice of vantage point.
Take your time: This is a slow, meditative artwork designed for reflection and immersion. It is constantly changing with the weather, the wind, the tide and evolving natural light. Watch the people around you. Watch the water. This is a chance to be present somewhere extraordinary, under the stars, beside the Southern Ocean.
Move around: Walk the foreshore. The installation shifts in subtle and surprising ways as you change your viewing angle. Find the darker spots away from ambient light.
Get the most from your camera: Lighting the Sound is hard to fully appreciate with the naked eye alone. Through a camera, the scale and detail of the work become visible in a new way. This is a work that photographs beautifully, and FORM is running a competition for exactly that reason. Details are on the FORM website.
Practical things: Pack a puffer jacket. Pack an umbrella. If you'd rather stay in one spot, bring a chair and something warm to wear.
Take the sound with you
The largest light installation on Earth deserves a soundtrack. FORM has put together two ways to augment the experience acoustically, whether you’re at Anzac Peace Park or the Albany Town Centre, or simply wishing you were there.
Start with FORM's welcome to Lighting the Sound: a short audio introduction to the work and the place.
Or go deeper: Sounding the Light is an entire soundscape designed to accompany the installation. Produced by Stellar Beams, a Boorloo/Perth-based ambient music label curated by Kael Driscoll. It's a curated compilation of immersive sound built specifically for the lights and the landscape.
A note on what this place is
Kinjarling-Albany is one of the most significant places in Australia. It carries an enormous cultural history. It was the site of the first contact between the Menang Noongar people and European explorers. It is a place of weight and complexity, and extraordinary natural beauty.
Kari Kola's installation asks you to sit with all of that. To look outward across the Albany Harbour and consider the full depth of what you're standing in.
Stay longer than you planned. No two nights look the same. No two experiences are the same.
Lighting the Sound runs for the final weekends in March: 20 - 22 | 27 - 29
Lighting the Sound is initiated and produced by FORM Building a State of Creativity. Lotterywest is a Major Supporter of the City of Albany’s Albany 2026 Program. Lighting the Sound is proudly supported by the Western Australian Government through Tourism Western Australia.
