Sydney Opera House lights up as part of Vivid Live at Sydney Opera House on May 23, 2014 in Sydney, Australia. Vivid Sydney is an annual event celebrating the themes of music, light and ideas throughout the city. (Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Vivid Sydney is part music festival, part celebration of art and part extravagant display of technology. Combined, the effect is more harmonious than might be expected and offers something everyone who can travel to Australia's shores in late May and early June.

Billed as a "festival of light, music and ideas," the festival is now in its sixth year and stunned guests with 50 free light installations, concerts, and a series of TED-like talks and workshops. According to the Guardian, the festival brought 270,000 visitors on its opening weekend, a 170 percent increase from the previous year.

The lights around the city went on at 6 p.m. and stayed on until midnight, luring crowds to streets that might otherwise have been empty on a weekday evening. With family-friendly exhibits as well as music acts around the city and in the Sydney Opera House, it was a bustling week of lights and sound.

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According to the Los Angeles Times, the light projections scattered around the city were meant to chart the birth of human civilization through our modern times of technological achievement.

But the real goal of the event was to bring people together and out of their homes. "The Vivid brand that has evolved in the past five years is about interaction," reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

To see some gifs of the interactive light displays, visit Smithsonian, and be sure to keep an eye out for next year's festival.