Posted on 04/05/2021 7:23:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Set designers were finally able to draw fans into their vivid dream without the constraints of Newtonian physics. Yet virtual reality isn't all wonder.
Pandemic lockdowns crushed the concert industry, but things are finally starting to move again. Many of us are optimistic that dense crowds might gather regularly by mid-autumn. The process is already starting in red states. Once everybody who’s anybody “takes the jab,” mass events should spread slowly across the country.
All over the world, people are dying for another taste of what Émile Durkheim called “collective effervescence”: the intense thrill we get from a mass gathering with a common purpose. You’ll find it at rock shows, political rallies, and religious revivals.
Durkheim saw this act as the basis for shared religious experience and group solidarity. We need each other’s smiling faces, synchronic movements, and even body odors. It’s part of the natural human need for community.
But what will entertainment look like under the mindless restrictions that hypocritical elites are trying to sell as the “New Normal”? Search no farther than South by Southwest. Every spring, the event attracts a quarter of a million trend-chasers to Texas. Convened in downtown Austin, SXSW is to the concert industry what the World Economic Forum is to corporate globalism.
Much like the leaders of this year’s World Economic Forum, the big thinkers at last weekend’s SXSW called for a “Great Reset” in entertainment. If their overarching vision comes to pass, future “live” concerts will be immersive digital environments complete with augmented reality—basically, rave culture writ large. The dream of the ‘90s is alive in Austin.
SXSW visionaries fantasize about the “embodiment of avatars” in mixed reality, critical race theory for the music industry, and how to capitalize on the expanding “Metaverse“—that digital realm “driven by a new generation growing up online and global platforms paving a new way for people to be together, even when they can’t in person.” Other sessions had snappy titles like “Immersive Retail: Connected Shopping in a New Era,” “Beyond the Gender Binary,” and “Gene Editing: The Biotech Revolution of our Times.”
Industry experts answered heavy questions like “Can VR Create Real Change?” (as in socio-political change), and “Can 5G Transform the Live Music Experience?” Without paying $400 to find out, I assume the answer to both is “Yes—isn’t it great?” If the wildest fantasies of tech innovators come true, they’ll become so all-encompassing we’ll never wake up from them.
For a year now, almost every live show has been held in a virtual format. For the most part, the experience is super-lame, like a long Zoom call where you never get to talk. Despite their best efforts, set designers and VR programmers haven’t synthesized Durkheim’s collective effervescence. But they’re trying.
One of the big showcases at SXSW was “Welcome to the Other Side,” a virtual DJ set performed in a digital rendition of Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral. This is an ideal arrangement in a society where the cathedral isn’t a practical concert venue. Unless your Oculus headset explodes on your face, the venue is basically fireproof.
Because there are no physical limitations in virtual reality, the set design was superb. The animated star, Jean-Michel Jarre, was flanked by morphing 3D video walls and surrounded by loops of curved light beams. In the tradition of DJs twisting knobs vigorously—pretending to do something impressive while pre-recorded music throbs on the sound system—Jarre’s avatar pretended to control green lasers.
Out in the real world, millions of people danced around their living rooms, their eyes blanked out by VR head-sets, floorboards creaking quietly like some worldwide silent disco. Whether they like it or not, any forward-looking artist will move in this direction. From video games to romantic encounters, stakeholders are hyping VR and other immersive technologies as a necessary step in human evolution.
“Virtual reality is to the performing arts today what cinema was to the theatre in its early days,” Jarre prophesies with a French accent thicker than TV static. “I believe that VR will become tomorrow, a mode of expression in its own right.”
The Notre Dame simulation was impressive. Like clever magicians, its producers managed to desecrate one of Christendom’s holiest sites without ever stepping foot inside. But what if they could create their own techno-pagan temples from scratch?
For 16 years, the Belgian electronic music festival Tomorrowland has done exactly that. Its sprawling structures are legendary. The main stage featured a massive sun-god one year, an elaborate cosmic tree in another. Each show pushed stagecraft to its limits.
Then last year, COVID-19 restrictions forced the communal event online, along with everything else in the world. In response, Tomorrowland’s promoters created a vast virtual space, powered by 3-D technology. Pre-recorded DJs appeared onstage via green screen, pretending to do something awesome while pre-recorded tracks played on their turntables.
The stages for Tomorrowland’s New Year’s Eve show were among the most elaborate I’ve ever seen. Set designers were finally able to draw fans into their vivid dream without the constraints of Newtonian physics.
As a tour rigger in my professional life (and a raver in my ill-spent youth), I’m always fascinated by concert technology. It’s thrilling to hang 50 tons of intricate, dynamic gear in the air, then watch it come alive above performers and crowds. One major challenge is figuring out how to bring the set designer’s vision into the physical world—using heavy equipment—while keeping everyone safe.
Virtual productions circumvent that problem. With ornery riggers on lockdown, Tomorrowland techs managed to erect their exquisite structures with no one there to say, “No way! It’ll collapse under its own weight!” What designer could resist this power?
The New Year’s Even show boasted enormous truss rings suspended by magic, firing lasers on the virtual audience like UFO probes. From behind glowing screens, “attendees” watched a huge psychedelic seahorse swimming above a mob of soulless avatars. Disembodied viewers chased luminous energy balls through the waving branches of the “Tree of Melodia,” enclosed by stained-glass cathedral walls.
Such possibilities can only be unlocked in a virtual environment. For artists with a serious God-complex, it’s a great time to be alive.
There’s a genuine religious zeal at the heart of rave culture, reflected in the wider entertainment-industrial complex. For instance, Tomorrowland’s NYE after-movie closes with this cringe-inducing doxology:
Great people of tomorrow… When life is darkest and sadness reigns, the Tree of Melodia uses its music to heal. When sound moves through Her branches, the soul of the Tree is speaking. … Live today. Love tomorrow. Unite forever.
It’s hard to “unite forever” while sitting alone with VR goggles over your eyes, but with sufficient investment, who knows? If relentless progress continues, your withered soul might be healed by some make-believe tree on the Internet.
Doubters may sneer, but this mystical quest has a history of mass appeal. It was already old news when the prescient Douglas Rushkoff published his 1994 classic, “Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace.”
“Cyberia is about…a moment when anything seemed possible,” Rushkoff observed. “An entire subculture—like a kid at a rave trying virtual reality for the first time—saw the wild potentials of marrying the latest computer technologies with the most intimately held dreams and the most ancient spiritual truths.”
Rushkoff finished the book in 1992, but his publishers worried “electronic mail” and “the Internet” were just passing fads, too far out to stay relevant. Years later, the same skeptics are living life through this new thing called a smartphone.
The real irony is how many one-time optimists now despise this controlled techno-topia. Deep down, we prefer the ancient rite of gathering together in close contact, with no immersive gadgets or hygienic barriers. We want chance encounters and pre-smartphone serendipity. We want each other’s visceral presence: real communion.
We want organic life in the forefront, with advanced tech as an afterthought. Unfortunately, that’s not the future being planned for us.
Dream on, fools.
dense crowds might gather regularly—
Dream on, fools.
If one wants to construct crowds of dense people on a regular basis, the availability of fools would not seem to be a limiting factor.
If they could bring Walter Becker back, I’d pay to virtually watch a Steely Dan concert.
‘We need each other’s smiling faces, synchronic movements, and even body odors. It’s part of the natural human need for community.’
you mean the cardboard faces at the football games didn’t cut it...?
Which rock star will be the first to get stoned and break a leg falling off a virtual stack of amps?
>> the intense thrill we get from a mass gathering with a common purpose. You’ll find it at rock shows, political rallies, and religious revivals.
A concert or party or church gathering does not have to be particularly large to be an exciting and rewarding experience. Only the FOMO crowd (fear of missing out) go to events to be seen and show off online to their friends who did not go.
>>Durkheim saw this act as the basis for shared religious experience and group solidarity. We need each other’s smiling faces, synchronic movements, and even body odors. It’s part of the natural human need for community.
Nope. I don’t need to smell crazy crowds.
That said, movies work best in a theater with a respectful audience where everyone in the audience has a realization or awareness or response at the same time. That collective engagement can enhance the movie you are seeing, especially comedies where the roar of laughter is genuine and not canned response as it is on television.
>>Much like the leaders of this year’s World Economic Forum, the big thinkers at last weekend’s SXSW called for a “Great Reset” in entertainment. If their overarching vision comes to pass, future “live” concerts will be immersive digital environments complete with augmented reality—basically, rave culture writ large.
80% of the money in music in the year before Covid came from streaming content.
Much easier for them to do the same with the concert industry. No longer needing to rent a big venue, line the pockets of city councilmembers so they can have the exclusive contract on said civic venues, no longer having to share a cut of the ticket sales with Ticketmaster or “Stubhub”. And because streaming is already covered in their contracts it makes sure more of the money goes to the corporation behind the “stars”.
>>For a year now, almost every live show has been held in a virtual format. For the most part, the experience is super-lame, like a long Zoom call where you never get to talk. Despite their best efforts, set designers and VR programmers haven’t synthesized Durkheim’s collective effervescence. But they’re trying.
The best I’ve seen have been small stage, well captured sound and light (whether in an empty club or simply at home or a home studio). And the performer engages with the livestream audience reading their live comments and interacting. Smaller scale shows, “local/regional” artists playing to an international audience of 20-300 people generally for “tips”.
The “bigger” shows will never have the feel at home but if they wanted to make it more like “live” experiences let the audience viewers toggle between 3 or 4 different camera angles (whole stage, spotlight on the singer, etc.) rather than all of the rapid edits forced on the viewer.
The most unusual staging I saw last year was a Japanese band that played in the back of a minivan/SUV while it was tearing down the highway at night. They were all cramped in the very back banging on the drums, playing the guitars, and screaming their words. Viewer saw the band (facing the tailgate) and the highway movement as the vehicle was in motion.
>>There’s a genuine religious zeal at the heart of rave culture,
What good is a rave without people, sex, or Ecstasy?
>>”Many of us are optimistic that dense crowds might gather regularly by mid-autumn”
As mom and dad used to say about things they didn’t want to see, do, or approve of “we’ll see”
They’ve been playing this “maybe next month” game for 14 months now.
Was it a wrestling event or something (I don’t recall, only had a fleeting encounter with whatever it was) where the home (stream) viewers had digital avatars in the audience?
might as well go digital/virtual with the audience if they are going to simply insert cardboard props.
The billboards/ads in stadiums are already digitally altered for home audiences. “Gladiator” showed the audience could be a composite/computer effect.
China would love it for their next Olympics broadcast. Why just photoshop the skies?
>>If they could bring Walter Becker back, I’d pay to virtually watch a Steely Dan concert.
That’s the thing, the bigger bands don’t stand to gain much by selling digital tickets to shows. You can just go to the interwebs or DVDs and watch and listen to concerts from any era by performers who are long gone (but much more talented than today’s crop).
Steely Dan @ Sony Music Center, NYC - Band & Crew Rehearsal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAZ_TELKNZ0
The stage had painted backdrops and backgrounds.
Movies have rear projection.
Video has green screen.
So what’s the big deal??
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