Electric Daisy Carnival – Immersive Experience

By Tim Wut On July 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment

For those who are unfamiliar, the inaugural Electric Daisy Carnival: Las Vegas took place a couple weekends ago on June 24, 2011. The official definition of the event is an annual electronic dance music festival that has historically taken place at the end of each year’s month of June. Electronic dance music festival? You mean a massive? Or *gasp*, a rave?

Well, sort of, but not really. For this first Vegas year, I had an amazing opportunity to attend as a fan, and also to cover the festivities on behalf of the LA Music Blog (check out coverage of the music and events here!), and I noticed something this year. It was something prevalent from last year’s event but definitely more noticeable at this particular one; something that this festival’s great location and over the top production value really helped to highlight.

And for those who are a bit confused as to why we are even here discussing an electronic music festival and pondering the question, “what does this have to do with immersive technologies anyway?”. I’ll get to that in a second. Promise.

For a complete photoset for EDC Las Vegas 2011: Click here!

But in order for me to explain that, we once again bring up that dirty word. When you hear it, certain feelings of controversy rise to the top of our attention, and for good reason: images of underground warehouse parties where people take recreational substances and dance all night to techno music come to mind almost immediately.

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.” (Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989)

Cheeky quotes and quirky references aside, I did have a point to all this. And that is that the Electric Daisy Carnival was definitely MORE than a rave in the traditional sense, moving beyond a simple music festival to a fully immersive experience. And this is where we’ve been seeing the use of technology and art aid in the evolution and growth of live shows and events. Promoted by Insomniac productions as “an absolute indulgence of the senses”, Insomniac’s marketing has got it right. Lights; music; live performers and art; and immersive installations like the festival-hopping Heineken Dome (which employs 360 degree dome projection technology), the Rabbit Hole (a tunnel of thousands of twinkling lights enhanced with kaleidoscope specs), and the Lily Pads (a meadow of softly glowing circular platforms that change and interact with the weight of curious hoppers); and of course, much, much more.

Just walking throughout the carnival grounds proved to be a fantastic multi-sensory experience: smelling the carnival food, seeing the twinkling lights coming off of carnival rides, feeling the conflicting sensations of cooling misters vs. the heat from blazing fireballs, and finally hearing the music from multiple large-scale stages meld perfectly together inside the Las Vegas Speedway grounds to the point where one could make out a single synchronicity of deep thumping bass. An immersive experience: making use of art and technology to create experiences that tap into multiple neural pathways to conjure mental, physical, and emotional responses.

This is definitely the kind of stuff we are excited to see! From the LoveTech Interactive Dome at May’s Lightning in a Bottle (which employs gesture tech and haptics exhibits), to the various iterations of the Cubitron (a man-made light tunnel made of ping pong balls and sequenced LED’s), immersive installations are becoming a staple at large scale festivals. For example, Coachella, a highly accredited music festival of equal size sees no shortage of tech-art immersive installments. Even the prominence of VJ’s (Video Jockeys) with custom-programmed light shows and stage effects has grown exponentially in importance over the years; having a great visual aspect to a DJ/music set can be the difference between memorable and “meh”.

A suggestion to everyone reading to check out live videos of Richie Hawtin presents Plastikman; a show that employs ambient (minimal) techno with dark undertones synced PERFECTLY to a 360 degree cocoon projection set up. Really amazing stuff as Hawtin has been known to be a pioneer in terms of his music and employing different technological innovations into his live shows.

What else we’re excited for is the growing employment of these sorts of technological showcases at future events. Before seen only at offbeat festivals and events like Burning Man, it’s great that these technologies and installs are being experienced by larger populations (an estimated 240,000 attendees throughout EDC’s three day lineup). Personally, we’d love to see the employment of 3D projection technology to power the show of a world class musical artist like Tiesto or Deadmau5. And honestly, it’s only a matter of time.