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Tuesday, October 20, 2020
The Flaming Lips Host Trial Run Of Bubble Show At OKC’s Criterion
Pollstar: The need for social distancing during the pandemic has led to a lot of innovation within the concert industry, from livestreaming to drive-in shows. For The Flaming Lips, individual bubbles for audience members seems like the only obvious choice.
3 comments:
Cooper Nickels
said...
This is not what I expected when I saw the title “bubble show”, but I am pleasantly surprised. This is actually a really creative solution to social distancing and live shows I think. Obviously it will have to be done right and safely to ensure that people really can not infect each other. I guess it would be too much for fans to show up their bubbles… I wonder how you get air to breath in these things those? Is there an intake somewhere? Does that have a filter on it? There are a lot of things to figure out with something like this, but I like the ingenuity of it. It seems like this is the kind of thing that could work for the Flaming Lips, but maybe not many other bands out there. I cannot imagine the sound is all that great, but I guess that is just a compromise you would have to make. I wonder if the audience will actually enjoy this kind of a show too. Is the gimmick something people will get behind and enjoy, or is it going to be too much to deal with, too distracting, or too annoying?
This is definitely an interesting take on keeping live performances… live. I, among likely many others, joked about living in the giant inflatable hamster balls to ride out the pandemic, but it is amusing and intriguing that the article stated that “individual bubbles for audience members seems like the only obvious choice. It is also funny that with the reduced crowds, the one woman in the title photo could not hide behind others to hide her texting or doing something on her phone. The article says that there is the potential for three people in each “space bubble”. I would hope that they organize this in some way, preferably in a way that only allows you to share a bubble with your own party. I know this is difficult, but so is everything these days. At a minimum, if you book specific bubbles, at least it would hopefully be easier for contact tracing, regardless of if you know the people in your bubble already or not. I did not know that The Flaming Lips had already experimented with Space Bubbles in their earlier performances as well which at least provides some context to how they arrived at the idea for performing in the pandemic, especially in addition to the crowd surfing.
Like Cooper said, I did not expect this kind of bubble. When I think of a "bubble show" I think of The Gazillion Bubble Show, which for some reason I sat through twice as a kid. This is an awesome idea for a concert, and makes so much sense right now. It's interactive, new, fun, and very weird in the best way. One of the first questions I had was how the audio was, and was surprised to hear that it wasn't too bad. I feel like fans of a band would pay a lot for this kind of experience and the chance to be so close to your favorite stars. Is this safe though? What happens if the singer is crowd surfing and they step on someone who isn't paying enough attention? How do the instruments get power, and how can the sound be controlled with a bubble barrier? Even with all of these questions, I'm happy that people are using the pandemic to branch out and take risks with how live shows can be presented. Hopefully some of this creativity with extend beyond quarantine.
3 comments:
This is not what I expected when I saw the title “bubble show”, but I am pleasantly surprised. This is actually a really creative solution to social distancing and live shows I think. Obviously it will have to be done right and safely to ensure that people really can not infect each other. I guess it would be too much for fans to show up their bubbles… I wonder how you get air to breath in these things those? Is there an intake somewhere? Does that have a filter on it? There are a lot of things to figure out with something like this, but I like the ingenuity of it. It seems like this is the kind of thing that could work for the Flaming Lips, but maybe not many other bands out there. I cannot imagine the sound is all that great, but I guess that is just a compromise you would have to make. I wonder if the audience will actually enjoy this kind of a show too. Is the gimmick something people will get behind and enjoy, or is it going to be too much to deal with, too distracting, or too annoying?
This is definitely an interesting take on keeping live performances… live. I, among likely many others, joked about living in the giant inflatable hamster balls to ride out the pandemic, but it is amusing and intriguing that the article stated that “individual bubbles for audience members seems like the only obvious choice. It is also funny that with the reduced crowds, the one woman in the title photo could not hide behind others to hide her texting or doing something on her phone. The article says that there is the potential for three people in each “space bubble”. I would hope that they organize this in some way, preferably in a way that only allows you to share a bubble with your own party. I know this is difficult, but so is everything these days. At a minimum, if you book specific bubbles, at least it would hopefully be easier for contact tracing, regardless of if you know the people in your bubble already or not. I did not know that The Flaming Lips had already experimented with Space Bubbles in their earlier performances as well which at least provides some context to how they arrived at the idea for performing in the pandemic, especially in addition to the crowd surfing.
-Ariel Bernhard
Like Cooper said, I did not expect this kind of bubble. When I think of a "bubble show" I think of The Gazillion Bubble Show, which for some reason I sat through twice as a kid. This is an awesome idea for a concert, and makes so much sense right now. It's interactive, new, fun, and very weird in the best way. One of the first questions I had was how the audio was, and was surprised to hear that it wasn't too bad. I feel like fans of a band would pay a lot for this kind of experience and the chance to be so close to your favorite stars. Is this safe though? What happens if the singer is crowd surfing and they step on someone who isn't paying enough attention? How do the instruments get power, and how can the sound be controlled with a bubble barrier? Even with all of these questions, I'm happy that people are using the pandemic to branch out and take risks with how live shows can be presented. Hopefully some of this creativity with extend beyond quarantine.
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