Save the Bridge lights! The lights are going out on the Bridge with the end of Vivid Festival. This means needlessly killing off the world's largest interactive artwork. Michael Pascoe comments. The lights are going out all over the CBD on Monday with the end of the Vivid festival - and that means needlessly killing off the world's largest and Australia's most successful interactive art work, Lighting the Bridge, by local lighting designers and magicians, 32 Hundred Lighting. For everyone with a view of the western side of the bridge, Vivid has provided a fascinatingly varied and constantly changing rendering of the Sydney icon. Forget the rainbow road crossing, this is the technicolour dreamcoat of harbour crossings, the drab old coat hanger re-imagined nightly by members of the public. It brightens the western harbour as never before, redefining what public art can achieve. So why turn it off? Spare that switch and save a renewed landmark, let the spectrum of glowing imagination continue to brighten Sydney nights, allow pilots on the glorious northern approach to continue to alert their passengers to the magic upon the harbour, the magic of the harbour city. A glowing view ... The Sydney Harbour Bridge lit up for Vivid. Photo: SMH This is a light show that doesn't tire because it's redesigned nightly - everyone has a chance to paint the bridge in the colours and patterns and movement of their desire. Visitors to the harbour are delighted by it, those privileged to have a regular view of it are, well, further privileged. And it's not just the rich, Sydney-waterfront-real-estate-is-the-meaning-of-life few - from the ridges of Ryde, anywhere that the bridge can be spotted, the light show can be appreciated. So why don't we keep it? Cost isn't the problem - this artwork's LED lights consume about half the power of the bridge's conventional lighting. This is art that is green and not boring at the same time. The nightly show put on by the bridge and 32 Hundred Lighting is gentle, quietly inviting, contemplative even, and given half a chance could become a landmark in its own right. So while we blow millions of dollars on entirely transient variations on the usual fireworks cliches, the electricity savings alone would pay for this ever-changing bridge and have something left over for the occasional sky rocket. There are a couple of minor matters, but nothing that couldn't be solved, if you wanted them solved. The lights were installed as a temporary work and would interfere with the usual bridge maintenance work - but that just means a bit of reworking. And the man most responsible for the art, 32 Hundred founder and managing director, Ian Reed, doesn't want this installation to be permanent. But, hey, he's an artist and a lighting designer - what would he know? Reed believes it has to be special to energise the Vivid festival and that to be special, it can't be there all the time. Nonsense, I say, the Opera House is special and we don't just bring it out to play for a couple of weeks a year. Reed would like to see Lighting the Bridge extended and revisited - on another occasion, he'd like the lighting to feature on both sides of the bridge. Well, maybe - there are those of us who think the eastern suburbs need no more encouragement. Some might suggest that too many pretty lights could end up making Sydney look like Las Vegas. There are some powerful people perhaps working on that, but this display is subtle compared with Vegas' brash excess. This concept is original: it really is the world's biggest interactive art work and a pleasure for all. If we don't grab it and claim it as our own, just watch the burghers of New York copy it for the Brooklyn Bridge and say it was theirs all along. And the Brooklyn is a pretty bridge to begin with. Some bridges are born beautiful, others have beauty thrust upon them, but the Sydney Harbour Bridge is neither. If the truth can be admitted, SHB viewed objectively is every rivet the dreary north England Tyne Bridge that northern England's Dorman Long built four years before its Sydney job. Our bridge has earned its affection by symbolising Sydney, by being ours. The beauty is the bridge's setting. Oh, it's a fine bridge in its workday grey, particularly for the kinetic experience of driving into its arching maw, but Vivid lighting has brought it alive, made it spectacular. So what do you think, keep this joyous rendition of the bridge, or, come Monday, turn it back into its utilitarian self, occasionally framed by crackers and roman candles? Poll: Should the coloured lights used on the Harbour Bridge during Vivid be used all year round? More often but not permanently Total votes: 3889.