Creating moments of wonder with UNSW Illuminate

By turning heads with its stunning art installations, UNSW Illuminate is a society that lets its work do all the talking (and showing).

Published on the 17 June 2026

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A render of UNSW Illuminate's art installation for the 2026 Uncontained Arts Festival titled 'Resonance'

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What exactly is UNSW Illuminate?

The Simpsons. Better Call Saul. Persona. Mario Kart. Annabelle. Creed. What do all these shows/movies/games have in common? Other than most of them being very good (and some being all-time classics), all of them are successful spin-offs that have achieved success independent of their original works.

UNSW Illuminate is firmly on its way to being a successful spin-off of Create UNSW, a student-led club started in 2012 that's all about fostering passions in engineering, innovation and design.

"How [Illuminate] started was that we were part of Create UNSW, and they made an installation for Vivid Sydney [for 2016]. The installation got super popular, so we split off from [Create]," recalls Lisa Ni, an Electrical Engineering student who joined the society in November 2025 as a Project Lead.

So where exactly does UNSW Illuminate sit on the spectrum of art and engineering? The answer is fluid, as the society floats freely within the intersection of creativity and design. But whatever the project is, the overall aim is to combine art with technology to create something magical that resonates with people.

"Illuminate is a very interesting project because it's trying to bring in students from all the different faculties together, and the group has really [interesting] projects and certain things to do for everyone at the university."

Alexei Machkevitch
UNSW Illuminate Art and Design Lead

"We have roughly 20 or so people, so it's basically the Team Leads, then you have the sub-teams for Electrical and Mechanical, Software and Design," Lisa explains.

As Illuminate's team is quite modest in size, Lisa says the society embraces the 'one at a time' project approach, even if it has grand artistic ambitions in its back pocket: "It's definitely very one by one. Every time [there's] an event, we try to apply for it. Once we get the commission, then we get to making that.

"[In 2025], the team was doing an installation for the UNSW Museum of Human Disease [and] they also wanted to do an application for Vivid as well. But since the timelines overlapped, they couldn't really divert their attention to both."

Expanding on this, Lisa explains that unlike other UNSW societies that can get sponsorships (such as the Campus Runners or RailSoc), funding for Illuminate's projects requires external parties to either approach them or to accept their pitches: "We run by commission, right? For us to get the funds for our projects, we need someone to come to us. So there were some years, especially during COVID, when we weren't able to host something larger, so a lot of things stayed in the prototyping stage."

Learning while balancing art, design and engineering

When it comes to the 'making' aspect of Illuminate's art installations, it all begins like most creative endeavours: with an idea.

"Typically, we design something and then we submit the idea [to an event]," explains Lisa. "As we get closer to the event, we'll work with whoever commissioned it and that's when the idea gets more fleshed out."

"But at the start, it's more just brainstorming, seeing what we can put out and what we want to make each year."

Once an idea is settled, the 'fleshing out' part is left to the design teams, which is where Alexei Machkevitch, a Bachelor of Design and Education student and Illuminate's Art and Design Lead who joined in February 2026, and his team come in to build on it.

"The six of us execs were just in a room and brainstorming it, and I was drawing on the board and modelling at the same time. Just throwing out ideas to see how they would react," he recalls.

"Aside from the making of [art installations], just getting upskilled and having to play around with everything is part of our society's goal, so it's still fun in the end as well."

Lisa Ni
UNSW Illuminate Project Lead

Lisa adds that due to the team's one-at-a-time approach, there's a "pretty substantial backlog of previous years' work" to draw inspiration from.

A big part of Illuminate's creative challenge during the design phase is properly balancing the artistic ambition with real-world engineering limitations. It is during this stage that compromising and collaborating constructively between the various teams is at its highest.

"You always read about how the artist has to compromise with the engineering. I didn't really believe it [at first] but you do have to compromise a lot, and that's okay," Alexei explains. "Often you're able to get to a better solution through that compromise and it only pushes you to perfect the other things even more."

Beyond working collaboratively and building up one's design and engineering skills, Lisa noted that her project management skills were given a surprising workout.

"There are so many different people with different skills, and it's hard to get the opinions of everyone, right?" she says. "So it's definitely a learning experience trying to work with everyone, trying to make different sacrifices that some disciplines might want [because] physically it's a little difficult to realise. Just [managing] all of these different schools of people, their skillsets and how they imagine the final piece to look like."

For Alexei, the collaboration with people from completely different disciplines and learning new technical skills really resonated with him.

"Often, you don't get someone with a completely different skill from you in a design course for a group project," says Alexei. "All your skills will be quite close together. So being able to work [with Illuminate] has been really enjoyable.

"I was [also] fortunate enough to learn how to weld for this project. The Mechanical Lead [for the team] also learned to weld, so it's been really cool to be able to practise that."

A stunning installation for the 2026 Uncontained Arts Festival

For the 2026 Uncontained Arts Festival, Illuminate built a fibre optic installation called 'Resonance' that depicts a circular path among reeds and bushes. Having seen the renders of the planned design, the final piece will be nothing short of stunning and befitting of the festival.

"You can touch the reeds and bushes, and they actually change colour. There will be different animations that ripple together.

At the centre of the installation, there's an illuminated well that's actually an infinity mirror, so you can look into it and see some flowers inspired by the native flora around Kogarah."

Alexei Machkevitch
UNSW Illuminate Art and Design Lead

"Kogarah means 'a place of reeds' and is connected with the Georges River, so the idea of the installation is to create an experience that reflects that," Alexei explains.

"We decided to make this beautiful reflective circular path [representative] of the riverbank, so as you walk into the installation, it's like you're walking on the riverbank itself and [among] the reeds and bushes. As you walk in, everything around you lights up and you can interact with everything inside the installation."

Lisa says the installation changed a lot from their original vision, saying that it was "a lot more simple and not as aesthetically appealing" before crediting Alexei and the Art Team for the big changes.

When asked about some of the hurdles faced by the whole team, she says manufacturing and the size of the installation were a challenge: "There's obviously physical limitations, but on top of my head, there's [about] 30 reeds and 60 something bushes. So, it's a lot of manufacturing and a lot of power needed."

Alexei adds: [The well] is only a four metre diameter circle, but there are around 100 objects around it with electrical components that need soldering, so it's a relatively small thing, but it requires so much planning and design around those problems.

"We're going between the Kensington and Paddington campuses. At Paddington, we have a dedicated space for assembly, and we're using all the maker spaces on each campus."

Vivid 2027 and beyond

While full focus is on the Resonance art installation, there are some early thoughts about what's next once that project is done. At the moment, Vivid 2027 is a potential target for Illuminate to aim for, but it is not a priority just yet, as it simply isn't feasible for Illuminate to split its focus across two different projects.

"How Vivid works is that the submissions come out around August. So, between June and August, it will be back to the drawing board," says Lisa. "Lots of going back and forth, trying to work with both what's physically capable, what we're physically capable of and what we want to realise in our vision. There's also some stuff that we missed out on capturing in [the Resonance] installation that we want to develop some more for the next one."

"We've been so busy with this one that I haven't even thought about what a project would look like for Vivid," laughs Alexei.

Beyond working on projects, there's an element of bonding through the love and passion for the work in Illuminate. While there are planned social events where possible, a lot of friendships form simply from working on art installations.

"Just because our deadline for [the Uncontained Arts Festival] commission has been pretty tight, a lot of the bonding is actually done through all of us just being there together and grinding away at the deadlines," says Lisa.

Looking beyond the next big project, Illuminate is always on the lookout for new team members. When asked who typically thrives in the society, Alexei highlights those with an ability to "abstract an idea" and "are very good at bouncing new ideas around and quickly aligning on it" will do well.

For those worried about not having the 'correct' degree or skill set, Lisa says that none of that is necessary, as the most important trait to have is passion for the project.

"We're definitely looking for people who are passionate about this project. It is a lot of work outside of uni, and sometimes it clashes with uni," she says. "As long as they have like some skills and an interest to learn, we'd be happy to take them."

"Illuminate is great because it gives you that ability to formally find a group of people who really share the same motivation as you, and want to go out and develop their own portfolio.

"[It could be] the electrical engineers and our team who are developing their skills with PCVs and soldering, or the mechanical side, or the art and design side as well. There's really space for each individual to develop their own skills."

Alexei Machkevitch
UNSW Illuminate Art and Design Lead