Friday, April 19, 2024
Phish At Sphere Las Vegas
Live Design Online: Abigail Rosen Holmes, Moment Factory, Chris Kuroda, Atomic Design, and Tait provide design and production elements for Phish — an American rock band formed in Burlington, Vermont in 1983 features guitarist/lead vocalist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman, and keyboardist Page McConnell — at Sphere Las Vegas, with four shows on April 18, 19, 20 & 21, 2024.
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I think I’ve written about the sphere about a thousand times for news comments, so what’s one more time? It is super cool that Phish is the second band to perform at the Las Vegas Sphere following the popular band, U2. The design team of the sphere is trying to approach the LED screen designs a little differently this time to give the band a chance to stand out from the U2. And with the technological advancements that have been made from the time the sphere first opened to now is projected to help the team with creating designs for LED screen. A quote that was said by Abigail Rosen Holmes, a team member who creates the visuals for Phish, really struck a chord with me. She said “All our visuals are executed live, and are able to be adjusted in real time.” This really shocked me and gave me a different perspective on what techies can do especially during a live show.
Admittedly, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the sphere this school year and that’s not changing, and admittedly, most of it has been negative. Admittedly, I also was pretty dismissive of U2’s concert tenure, but admittedly, I was pretty excited about this Phish show and pretty disappointed that I couldn’t be there. As the article explains, it’s a pretty massive undertaking to design a show for the Sphere, and I feel like it’s definitely the kind of venue that absolutely has to be filled. There really isn’t a way to take any shortcuts here because of how giant and obvious the entire inside video screen is. The actual stage is pretty tiny and kind of hard to see for most people in the audience, so it’s pretty important that the screen looks nice. Holmes' job on the show sounds like a pretty interesting and very busy role, and I imagine it was a lot of fun to get to have so much involvement in all the aspects of show’s design.
The amount of work that goes into designing a show for the sphere is absolutely insane. There is just no way to transfer another show into there, as Abigail Holmes describes in this article. Basically everything must be built from the ground up. Additionally, the video screens on the interior must be thought through in so much detail, probably far more than media design in any other production, simply because so many people will be heavily focused on those, perhaps looking at them more than they are looking at the actual band. I find it very interesting and impressive that they want each night's performance to be unique. Designing a show for the sphere is already a huge undertaking, and having 4 shows that aren't entirely the same is another level of dedication. I would love someday to work on or at least see what needs to go into a project of this massive a scale.
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