It’s nearing summertime, and with the winter thaw, the warm air, and the summer sunshine comes the events season. Music festivals, corporate retreats, conventions, expositions, weddings, and parties parties parties. Logistically, it’s a cutthroat industry, with 32% increase in competition among event planners in 2017 (Eventbrite 3rd Annual Pulse Report). Invariably, organizers of these events are always looking for ways to stand out, seeking with dedicated hunger the latest and greatest entertainment that the world has to offer.
One medium for entertainment that is globally on the rise is that of the Digital Dome – an immersive domed environment that is projection mapped to display 360° visual content, usually accompanied with equally immersive audio systems. Akin to the ever-evolving Virtual Reality technology, where participants can slip into an altered reality of light and sound, the Digital Dome unlocks new potential for event organizers to captivate attendees with the all-encompassing content of their heart’s desire.
Want your 200 person audience (actually, domes can hold many more people than that – we’ll get to this later) to experience summiting the peaks of Mt. Everest, diving into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, or dancing on the surface of the moon? All of the above? Digital Domes make that possible.
Geodesic Dome Projection, Obscura Digital
May this blog post serve to evangelize this unique medium and educate those thirsting for the bleeding edge of events entertainment.
Evolving from the early days of your favorite neighborhood planetarium, Digital Domes have come to cater to many different types of uses beyond the realm of science and astronomy; from brand, launches to live concerts to video gaming and training simulations. With the rise of technology, possibilities are becoming limitless for the types of environments that Digital Domes can create.
Sizes of Digital Domes can vary from a few feet, perfect for a single person, to two hundred feet, capable of holding thousands of people. They can be permanent fixtures embedded into architectural designs, or temporary pop-ups perfect for trade shows and ephemeral events.
L’Hemisfèric, The City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain. 110 meters long, and 55 meters tall.
With this new medium on the rise, artists and producers from many backgrounds and industries are experimenting with dome activations. Recently, major festivals in the music and entertainment industries have found major success with domes, including;
With massive gatherings like these thrusting Digital Domes into the forefront of entertainment, it is an exciting time to be in the know about this evolving medium.
But that is not the end of it. At the beginning of 2018, the Madison Square Garden Group announced their plans to build a MASSIVE permanent events dome in the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada. This dome is reportedly going to be an 18,000-seat arena, built specifically for music and entertainment performances, and also could host esports competitions and possibly boxing and mixed martial arts.
Artist rendering of the “MSG Sphere”
It’s clear: the Digital Dome is on the rise. The question now is how to get in the know with this new medium and start using it to your benefit. As an artist, a fan, or an event producer, there are more ways than ever to get up to speed on Digital Domes.
The following resources are recommendations for all those who are interested.
A website dedicated to fulldome shows, domes around the world, organizations, and events.
If you are an artist or fan in the Colorado Metro region, please join us at MORPHOS Digital Dome Programs including workshops, an artist in residency, and art show. For more information, please visit our sister nonprofit organization Denver Arts and Technology Advancement (DATA).
If you are an event producer who is interested in bringing a pop-up Digital Dome to your next event, you are interested in purchasing a dome, or would like some content development, don’t hesitate to contact us at Alt Ethos! We will be happy to assist you with any and all of your fulldome needs.
Pitching new and experimental engagements with your audience to your boss or client is no easy task, especially when your organization is unfamiliar with experiential design. In the experience economy, inspiring your audience with disruptive media can amplify your impact in monumental ways but too often ideas fail to come to fruition. So how can we advocate for creating engaging environments more effectively to our boss?
Understand your boss’ perspective For starters, striving to become more aware of the aspects of the business, specific strategies and endeavors, and opportunities for growth that your boss values is a step in the right direction. Likely, you are already intimately involved in many of these efforts but it can help immensely to put yourself in their shoes to see the organization from their eyes as best you can.
Say your boss is trying to create a campaign for a specific holiday to boost revenues. Then coming up with an experience that ties the celebration of that day to your product like Molson’s The Beer Fridge celebrating Canadian Federation Day is a great place to start.
Find a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (that’s tied to the quality of experience) Be prepared to connect the benefits of an improved experience to your goals as an organization. Where are you headed and what are your key performance indicators on the path to getting there? Great experiences come from big hairy audacious goals that require creative thinking and unconventional methods to create a memorable experience.
…And Solve It Map out the goal and how creating a memorable experience for your audience will get you there. Make sure to consult any experts within your organization that have an intimate stake in this goal to garner further understanding.
Working with a well-defined goal hand in hand alongside creative and marketing resources expedites the process to collaboratively developing a concept incorporating marketing strategies, innovative technology, and beautifully fabricated objects that accomplish said goal.
Ask questions to clarify with the experience designers any places where you aren’t clear. We’re here to help you to illustrate the experience inside and out with grace.
Experiential Marketing can have profound impacts on the bottom line for big and small companies alike. For instance in the six months immediately following Redbull’s World Record Stratos Freefall, sales rose 7% to $1.6 billion in the U.S., according to research firm IRI.
Plan how to measure the results Defining strategies to measure impact provides assurance that through studying the effects of the experience, you’ll ensure this is a sound investment of your organization’s money, time, and energy. When creating an interactive environment, there is a massive opportunity to connect the sensors that allow audiences to control various forms of light and sound to record and report their measurements as quantitative and actionable insights.
For Old Navy’s 20th Birthday their #Selfiebration wall generated 640 million twitter impressions, 13,669 contest entries, and 17,498 uses of the tag #Selfiebration.
Connect the experience to your digital presence In the information age, a majority of organizations are utilizing websites, social media, and other digital technologies to connect with their audiences online. Stepping outside the comfort zone of online marketing strategies into designing an experiential physical environment opens a whole new realm of possibilities to intertwine the two realms. In this case it’s important to illustrate the connection between the existing endeavors online and how this environment will galvanize more sharing on social media, more searches on google and more marketing qualified leads, subscribers, etc.
Refinery29 brought their imaginative spirit into the real world through 29Rooms an experience that connected 29 of their digital partners with audiences and created a plethora of highly shareable content that circulated throughout the web.
Visuals, Visuals, Visuals So now we have a great idea and a plan to measure its effectiveness. With all this legwork your almost prepared for a great pitch, but there’s one more key concept we’ve discovered along our travels. Developing visual materials of the idea is essential to stimulating the imagination of your boss. We commonly curate pinterest boards to assist with ideation but there is also a well of information from searching both Creative Applications and Vice’s Creators.
-by Paul Elsberg
Check out Alt Ethos’ Projectsfor examples of how experiential exhibitions, temporary or permanent, can excite a range of audiences.
Alt Ethos invites you to our first open house in our new office/production studio. Come celebrate with us at the Prism Workplaces facility-wide open house to take in the work of talented artists, designers, and creatives. We are grateful to be a part of this community as we continue to expand our organizations into new possibilities. The open house will be held on Friday, November 3, 2017 from 5:30pm to 11:30pm at Prism Workplaces 999 Vallejo Street, Denver Colorado. Alt Ethos is located through entrance 2 at space #30.
A sneak peek photo from moving weekend.
Meet the team and see a showcase of our work. Please click “Going” on the Facebook event page. We are delighted to share our new space with our sister nonprofit organization, Denver Arts + Technology Advancement (DATA).
I have listed some recent highlights of activity below:
Check out the new office!
Say hello to our new Project Manager, Amy Lynn Herman!
Creative Startups Accelerator. Albuquerque, New Mexico
Alt Ethos creates engaging environments that transform physical spaces into shared interactive experiences that meld various forms of creative technology into compelling stories. This creates moments that disrupt, engage, and inspire.
Our team has recently been able to join in some of the most prestigious and enlightening events which have opened our eyes to new ways of thinking and helped to create a stronger connection with the creative tech community.
Founded in 1996, the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) is a transdisciplinary center for research, creation, production, training and dissemination dedicated to developing and conserving digital culture. North America’s first Living Lab, the SAT specializes in immersive environments, the use of high-speed networks and experience design.
With the aim to create tangible, all-encompassing audiovisual experiences, the Satosphere is the first permanent immersive theatre devoted to artistic development. The dome, which puts the audience at the center of the works, forms a 360-degree spherical projection screen that can accommodate up to 350 spectators.
This year focused on explorations of total body immersion inside of digital spaces, experiencing technology on direct sensory levels. A few examples: Atau Tanaka, Professor of Media Computing at Goldsmiths University gave a talk on The Body as Musical Instrument, illuminating his method of translating gestural interaction to audio signals. For those curious, Atau’s performance at TEDxPantheonSorbonne may be found here.
Currents New Media Festival
On June 10th our team traveled to Santa Fe to experience Currents New Media 2017. Currents brings multidisciplinary artists from across the planet to exhibit VR/AR/MR creations blending experimental and psychological expression through immersive, interactive technology.
Currents began as a project in 2002 intended to bring together video and New Media artists who at the time had few places to exhibit. Since then the festival has grown in the number of artists and mediums – Now featuring Virtual Reality, projection mapping, robotics, sensor integration and beyond.
For 15 consecutive years Mariannah Amster and Frank Ragano have curated this event under their nonprofit Parallel Studios. Such an event is only possible with a diverse network of multitalented artists from across the globe, creating a radical melting pot of new concepts.
GlobalMindED
On June 23rd, Matt Maes – CIO participated in the GlobalMindED Tech Track “Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality: Opportunities in Education” alongside Julien Lynge of Arch Virtual and the DaVinci Institute and Sandi Mays of the Zayo Group.
The GlobalMindED movement is about access, equity and opportunity for First Generation to College and underserved populations, those who work with them and those who want to hire a diverse talent pipeline. At our annual conference, we convene thought leaders from all backgrounds and industries to support educational innovators who are setting a new standard for inclusive leadership.
The opening reception began at 9:00am led by Futurist and Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute, Thomas Frey who explained the cataclysmic economic shift which will be brought on by driverless vehicles. Automobile accident rates will plummet. The need for driver’s insurance will become obsolete. Intersections will operate only as a junction rather than a stopping point as cars move harmoniously past each other.
The second panel, Personalized Learning: Students at the Center was led by Dr Bena Kallick, program director of Eduplanet 21 featuring Superintendent Jeff Dillon of Wilder School District, Teacher Jody Ordoñez of Vista High School and Principal Dr. Bertie Simmons of E.L. Furr High School. This discussion revealed the merits of student led programs and the technologies which make this new methodology possible. The new generation of learners are increasingly curious and are growing to depend less and less on the role of an authoritative leader to pass on knowledge. Our technology has grown hand in hand with us to the point where lesson plans may be gained from sources such as Wolfram Alpha, Khan Academy, Youtube and so on.
The Tech Track began to fill up at 11:10am as many from the previous panel in Court C remained and others filed inside. Lynge, Mays and Maes (not related) then hosted a discussion rich in topics ranging from basic to interestingly advanced. We first began with introductions and each of our most recent projects and moved into intriguing topics such as the social dynamics of VR, whether AR or VR is more effective in the classroom and VR conferencing.
Eyeo Festival
Most recently Paul Elsberg – CSE attended the Eyeo Festival held from June 26th-29th.
Since its inception in 2011, the team behind the Eyeo Festival has been inspired by the notion that this decade presents an exceptionally exciting time to be interested in art, interaction, and information. The way we experience all three is changing. The way all three interact and overlap is quickly evolving. Easier access to powerful tools and technologies continues to increase. What data is, where it comes from, and how we utilize it, looks different than ever before.
On Thursday, July 27th 5:30pm – 7:30pm at the Commons on Champa’s Innovation Lounge Elsberg will be leading second installment of Denver Arts + Technology Advancement Hacksters – Hackster.io Fusion 360 Demo and Eyeo Festival In Review – Presented by Hackster.io, Autodesk and Alt Ethos! We will be going over how to approach using Autodesk Fusion 360’s modeling capabilities to design object enclosures. We will also be covering insights from the international Eyeo Festival, a conference featuring professional creative technologists at the forefront of the industry. You may RSVP for the event here:
We are very pleased to bring back lots of amazing insights from Eyeo Festival, an international conference for professionals at the epicenter of creative technology. You can check out the speakers and more information at the festival websitehttp://eyeofestival.com/.
Matt Maes is a Denver animator focused on immersive and interactive technology. He is Chief Influence Officer ofAlt Ethos, Ltd and is also an executive member of the nonprofit organization Denver Arts and Technology Advancement (D.A.T.A.)
Alt Ethos and the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery invite you to the grand opening of Soundscape, a real-time audio/visual experience. Step into this immersive exhibit where physical presence creates music and live visuals. The opening coincides with FCMoD’s David Bowie LaserDome event. Tickets for the LaserDome can be purchased here. The opening event is free and open to the public with hor d’oeuvres and non-alcoholic beverages provided alongside a cash bar. The opening will be held on Saturday, June 24, 2017 from 7pm to 10:30pm at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery.
As you walk through the Music and Sound Lab a mysteriously glowing room catches your eye. Out of curiosity you step inside and soon discover that your position inside the room is creating music in real time. The intimate scale of the room widens below you as you walk suspended in space. The wall pulsates over your coordinates on the floor. As the moments pass, others join in creating an ensemble of organic sound.
This exhibition was conceived through the collaboration of Alt Ethos Experiential Design studio and staff at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. Alt Ethos custom designed this interactive exhibition to create a meaningful experience for patrons to learn, reflect, and have fun through hands-on explorations. Visitors control a multichannel sound system and projection-mapped visuals through physical movement.
The Fort Collins Museum of Discovery (FCMoD) is a history and science museum filled with interactive exhibits and fascinating artifacts which tell the stories of Northern Colorado. The museum creates meaningful opportunities to connect body movement to sound through hands-on and collections-based explorations in science and culture.
Alt Ethos is an experiential design studio that synthesizes digital and physical environments into unexpected realities. Alt Ethos are artists, designers, and engineers creating innovative projects for the modern world. They meld various forms of light, sound, and creative technology into shared interactive experiences.
Please join us for the opening of Soundscape, an instrumental environment exhibition. This unique exhibition changes the ways in which we view music and exploration in museums. The opening will be held on Saturday, June 24, 2017 at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery at 408 Mason Court, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Matt Maes is a Denver animator focused on immersive and interactive technology. He is Chief Influence Officer ofAlt Ethos, Ltd and is also an executive member of the nonprofit organization Denver Arts and Technology Advancement (D.A.T.A.)
If you are an artist or fan in the Colorado Metro region, please join us at MORPHOS Digital Dome Programs including workshops, an artist in residency, and art show. For more information, please visit our sister nonprofit organization Denver Arts and Technology Advancement (DATA).
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