One of my favorite performances is a live set by Four Tet for his album ‘Morning/Evening’, which features a large scale 3D light installation. Four Tet transferred the same stage set up to multiple locations in the world, each one slightly different from another.
The installation is done by dynamic international collective Squidsoup. The show at London’s Alexandra Palace used 42,000 individually addressable LEDs hanging in 3D matrix, controlled in real time by computer. Some of the shows feature the artist in front of the LED installation while the others are completely immersive with both the artist and audience placed inside the matrix, providing a more intensely immersive audio-visual experience. Despite the great number of LEDs, the space is relatively dark with soft glowingly LEDs and occasionally some spot lights that pulses with the beats. Since this is a live set where Four Tet is generating music out of a bank of electronic equipment and laptops rather than a theatrical performance, the focus here is not on what the performer is doing but on the sounds and lights the audience perceive in that moment and space. It is intended to immerse the audience completely in the present. Therefore, no light is being projected onto the performer and he’s only visible when the LEDs are glowing around him. He, just like every audience, became a part of the whole space where every point and direction has equal significance.
The field of light is smooth and diffusive, with organic patterns changing like breathing. The smooth transition from pixel to pixel in the giant 3D structure provides a sense of depth and illusion of motions. The color combinations and transitions of LEDs are perfectly in synch with the emotions and flow of beautiful melodies and hypnotizing beats. The perfect combination of multi-sensory stimulus invokes great pleasures in the brains of the audience, enjoying the experience of interpreting music into colors, shapes and movements.