visitors stop being spectators and become makers
At the edge of Sydney Harbour, where history meets spectacle, Samsung has opened a doorway — three doorways, in fact — inviting festival-goers to step through and discover what it means to see the world as a filmmaker. The Sky Portal Studio at Vivid Sydney is less a product demonstration than a philosophical proposition: that the line between witness and creator dissolves when the right tools are placed in ordinary hands. Running nightly through June 13 at First Fleet Park, the free installation asks a quiet but consequential question — who owns the story of a city, and what happens when everyone is given the means to tell it?
- Samsung has transformed a historic harbour park into a three-chamber creative gauntlet, where festival crowds are handed flagship camera technology and told to make something.
- The tension is deliberate — passive spectators are nudged, portal by portal, toward active authorship, with AI tools that rewrite images after the moment has already passed.
- A parallel competition raises the stakes further, promising $3,200 prize packs to those whose Galaxy-captured moments earn a place in a collaborative 24-hour portrait of Sydney.
- Every submission feeds a user-generated content engine, blurring the boundary between personal memory and corporate marketing in ways most participants may never pause to consider.
- The activation lands at a festival that is itself expanding — running day and night for the first time — anchoring Samsung's brand inside a $91 billion tourism ambition for New South Wales.
Samsung has positioned itself at the centre of Vivid Sydney with the Sky Portal Studio, a three-chamber installation at First Fleet Park in The Rocks built around the camera and AI capabilities of the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Open nightly until June 13, it is free to enter and designed to move visitors from observation into creation.
Each portal offers a distinct encounter with the phone's technology. The first lets visitors shoot stabilised video against a customisable LED backdrop using a feature called Horizontal Lock. The second deploys an AI editing tool that can alter clothing, backgrounds, and objects within an image after it has been taken. The third responds to hand gestures for hands-free selfies. A Creative Studio at the end of the journey lets visitors refine whatever they have made.
Running alongside the installation is a competition open until June 10, inviting Galaxy device owners to submit photos and videos for inclusion in a collaborative film about Sydney. Three winners will receive prize packs valued at over $3,200 each, including a Frame Art TV, a Galaxy S26 Ultra, and Galaxy Buds4.
Samsung's local Vice President of Mobile Experience framed the activation as a convergence of art and technology, while the festival's director highlighted the shift from passive audience to active maker. That shift is the installation's central argument — that the S26 Ultra is not merely a possession but a lens that transforms how ordinary moments are seen and remembered.
The timing is deliberate. Vivid Sydney is growing, and Samsung's presence at scale allows the brand to embed product features into lived experience rather than specification sheets. Every image submitted to the contest extends that reach, quietly building a user-generated archive of what the Galaxy S26 Ultra can do — and making the extraordinary feel, for a moment, entirely within reach.
Samsung has planted itself at the heart of Vivid Sydney with an installation designed to turn festival-goers into filmmakers. The Sky Portal Studio, opening Friday night at First Fleet Park in The Rocks, is a three-chamber experience built around the camera and AI capabilities of the Galaxy S26 Ultra. For the next three weeks, until mid-June, anyone who walks through will encounter a version of Sydney that Samsung wants them to see—one filtered through computational power, stabilization algorithms, and generative editing tools.
The installation works in stages. The first portal, called Defy Gravity, lets visitors shoot video against a customizable LED backdrop while a spinning wheel adds visual flourishes. The Galaxy S26 Ultra's gyroscope and accelerometer keep footage level and steady, a feature Samsung calls Horizontal Lock. The second space, Unleash your Creativity, uses Photo Assist—an AI tool that lets people edit images after the fact, changing clothes, swapping backgrounds, adding or removing objects from a scene. The third portal offers hands-free selfies through a Palm Selfie feature that responds to hand gestures. After moving through all three, visitors reach a Creative Studio where they can refine whatever they've captured.
But the installation is also a funnel. Samsung is running a parallel contest through June 10, asking people to submit photos and videos shot on Galaxy devices for a collaborative film about Sydney. The premise is straightforward: capture a moment that matters to you, and together these moments become a portrait of the city. Three winners will receive Samsung gift packs worth over $3,200 each, including a 32-inch Frame Art TV, a Galaxy S26 Ultra, and Galaxy Buds4.
Eric Chou, Samsung's Vice President of Mobile Experience in Australia, framed the activation as a meeting point between art and technology. Brett Sheehy, the festival director, emphasized the shift from passive viewing to active creation—the idea that visitors stop being spectators and become makers. This is the throughline of the installation: Samsung's flagship phone is positioned not just as a device you own, but as a tool that changes how you see and document the world around you.
The timing matters. Vivid Sydney is expanding this year, running both day and night for the first time, and Samsung is a major partner. The festival itself is part of a larger economic strategy for New South Wales, targeting a $91 billion visitor economy by 2035. For Samsung, an experiential activation at a festival of this scale is a way to embed product features into memory—to let people feel what the S26 Ultra can do rather than read about it in a spec sheet.
The Sky Portal Studio is free. It runs from 6pm to 11pm each night through June 13. The installation exists in a specific place—First Fleet Park, a historic site in The Rocks—but it's designed to generate content that travels. Every photo and video submitted to the contest becomes part of Samsung's marketing ecosystem, a user-generated library of what the Galaxy S26 Ultra can capture. The real product being sold is not just the phone, but the idea that ordinary moments, when shot and edited with the right tools, become extraordinary.
Notable Quotes
Samsung is an important partner of Vivid Sydney, and we value their ongoing commitment to innovation and evolving how audiences engage with the festival.— Brett Sheehy AO, Vivid Sydney Festival Director
The Sky Portal Studio is an unmissable installation that invites every visitor to view the world differently, and to capture their vision through the lens of Galaxy S26 Ultra.— Eric Chou, Vice President of Mobile eXperience at Samsung Australia
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does Samsung need a physical installation at a festival? Couldn't they just advertise the phone online?
They could, but this is different. When you walk through those portals and see what the camera can do in real time—the stabilization, the AI editing—you're not reading a claim. You're experiencing it. Your hands are holding the phone. Your moment is being captured.
So it's about proof.
It's about proof, but also permission. The installation tells you it's okay to be a creator, not just a consumer. Most people don't think of themselves as filmmakers. Samsung is saying: you are. Here's the tool.
And the contest—that's the hook to get people to submit content?
Partly. But it's also genuine. They're building a film about Sydney from thousands of perspectives. That's not nothing. The prizes are real, but the idea is that you're contributing to something larger than yourself.
What happens to all that content after the contest ends?
That's the question, isn't it. Samsung gets a library of user-generated footage shot on their device, in their best light, in a major city. They can use it for marketing, for case studies, for showing what the S26 Ultra can do. The people who submitted it got to participate in something public and had a chance to win.
Is that fair?
It depends on what you value. If you care about the experience and the possibility of winning, it's fair. If you're thinking about the asymmetry of value—what Samsung gains versus what most participants get—then it's more complicated. But that's how experiential marketing works. The installation itself is free. The choice to submit is voluntary.