I recently had the opportunity to work on a very interesting and exciting project: a musical experience that is touring through the festival circuit this year and giving people the opportunity to give back to the community through their involvement. It has been at Government ball, Bonnaroo, Lake Shake, and will make its way through Lollapalooza as well as a few others to finish out the season.
For me, this project was a dive into an even deeper exploration of my design skills and ability to build unique and interesting worlds. These worlds were then fed through a series of developers who made it come alive in the real world. Each experience was responsive to the people that participated in it, allowing the graphics to be enjoyed on an even deeper level.
The project consisted of 4 houses for which I designed the UI interface that lived on each screen: tv, ipad etc. One of the houses was made to emulate a sound booth, for which, I designed 3 themes. The sound booth room walls and ceiling were covered in mirrors which all reflected the graphics shining out of the 9-panel LED wall. Each mirror room experience responded to the participant's voice, changing the visuals they were surrounded by. These graphics were designed in C4D with RedShift as the renderer and then brought into Notch to allow for real-time rendering and feedback: the sound reactivity.
Below you'll see some of the initial style frames followed by videos and photos of the actual mirror box experience. A lot of things were adjusted in the process both from client asks and limitations in regards to a live workflow. Too much beauty and a computer will over heat! Especially at some of these super hot festivals.
I had the pleasure of going and experiencing the graphics in person at Lake Shake in Chicago! Below are a few videos from that experience!
A little clip of one of the mirror cube experiences. Every time someone would make noise, the graphics would get brighter!
This was the experience based off of a combination of the style frames from up above. When someone would make noise, the shapes would change!
Perfect background for photo opportunities!
For the second house, the dance house, I spent time coming up with a design for the pressure reactive floor as well as the coinciding LED wall. This house was meant to be a silent disco where each participant got a pair of headphones and was asked to dance away on the dance floor and watch their impact both under their feet and on the wall.
Each time someone stepped on the floor, their feet would interact with the graphics and cause an explosion to shoot out. The coinciding LED wall responded to the amount of people on the dance floor: the more people, the more little cubes populated the wall.
Some initial style frames below for the LED wall.
And the floor! They ended up going with the first frame. The cubes would oscillate up and down as an animation, then when someone stepped on the floor, more little sprites of cubes would shoot out from their feet!
Here's a fun photo from the testing stage and then a few from people actually experiencing the event!
Testing phase!
LEDs in action at Lake Shake!
The other two houses were a listening and drum house! I've included a video from the drum house below with some of the other shareable from the event. I sadly wasn't able to get much of the listening house but it was just as awesome, you'll have to take my word on that!
Shareables below!