News
Summer into Dust
April 23, 2011
Thousands of spectators at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California, will never forget the amazing experience that they had on Saturday, 16 April, during the show by the rock group Arcade Fire. At the end of the show, more than 1250 glowing interactive balls dropped from the sky like luminous dust. Baptized “Summer into Dust” and inspired by Arcade Fire’s song “Wake Up,” this revolutionary visual experience was made possible thanks to ESKI’s PixMob technology. From Los Angeles to New York, journalists took note of the dazzling colors and effects, the synchronism, and the spheres’ spellbinding power.
Always on the cutting edge of innovation and at the service of imagination, the Montreal company contributed, in partnership with Moment Factory, Radical Média, and Tangible Interaction, to the production of these 2,000 PixMob Zygote balls.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, États-Unis
17 april 2011 | By Margaret Wappler
Coachella 2011: Arcade Fire releases the bubbles
If Woody Allen’s orgasmatron (from “Sleeper”) mated with a beach ball, you’d have something like the white bubbles that poured from the top of the stage into the sea of people at the end of Arcade Fire’s headlining set. For a few minutes, the audience pummelled and tossed them back and forth. From the stage, frontman Win Butler grinned, looking as though he was watching his kids open presents on Christmas Day.
Then the LED orbs started glowing red, purple, orange, yellow, green … sometimes a melange of all colors. And that’s when the balls stopped bouncing: Some audience members wanted to keep their power (if only to stuff them under their car seats an hour or so later) all for themselves.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, États-Unis
17 april 2011 | by Ben Ratliff
And during “Wake Up,” the last song before a string of encores, its contents were dislodged: hundreds of enormous white balloons, each about twice as big as a beach ball, implanted with computerized lights that started flashing various colors — red, purple, orange — in time to the music. After a few minutes of bouncing, they became concentrated and stationary in the front section: audience members had latched on to their artifact and wouldn’t let go. Look for them today on eBay.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, États-Unis
25 april 2011 | by Todd Marten
So what’s the going rate for a giant Arcade Fire LED ball from Coachella?
Leave it to Arcade Fire to one-up the standard T-shirt as a concert souvenir. As many fans are no doubt aware by now, the act unleashed about 2,000 glowing beachball-like orbs upon the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival crowd. Those who snared one of the LED-enhanced spheres found themselves with an unexpected free piece of art, and it’s never long these days before band-related loot makes its way to the secondary market.
So what’s the value of a limited-edition LED beachball? Even those selling them seem unsure.
“I want to share the joy of having one of these LED balls from the Arcade Fire show at Coachella 2011,” wrote one happy entrepreneur offering one of the balls for auction on EBay. “I’m not sure what it’s worth so I’m starting the bid at a $0.01 with no reserve.”
(…)The bidding in the EBay auction referenced above was at $41 after 14 bids. There are, however, some more ambitious sellers out there.
One dealer is asking for a starting bid of $899 for what’s claimed to be an unused and unopen beachball, although there are no pics of the item, only the concert. There were zero bids as of the time of writing.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, États-Unis
18 april 2011 | by Ben Ratliff
At Coachella, Every Note is Writ Large
The audiovisual happenings made a difference. This year they ran more conceptually, thanks to the Creators Project, a partnership between Intel and Vice, whose work spread across the site’s tents and stages. And so 2,000 giant white balls spilled from the top of Arcade Fire’s stage on Saturday night, each containing an LED light flashing in alternating colors and coordinated with the music…
ROLLING STONE, États-Unis
17 april 2011 | By Steve Appleford
Day Two of Coachella: Amazing Sets by Arcade Fire, the Kills, Mumford & Sons and More
As that song came to its soaring crescendo, Arcade Fire released 2,000 large balloons from above the stage, blinking in shades of red and blue as they tumbled across the top of the crowd. It was a stunning, otherworldly sight, and small groups of fans were soon seen gathering round the glowing orbs all across Coachella’s vast polo fields.
WIRED, États-Unis
19 april 2011 | by David Bullock
Coachella 2011 : Glowing Balls, Giant Art and Mucho Music
More than a thousand glowing balls drop from the top of the stage as Arcade Fire plays “Wake Up” on Saturday. The effect was striking with the balls (mostly) changing color in unison. Unfortunately, after a few bounces, most people held onto the balls, either to keep them as souvenirs or sell them. One is already listed on eBay with a buy it now price of $999.
Technicians from Eski spent most of the weekend putting together the electronics for the balls, which contained battery-powered circuit boards studded with LEDs that changed colors in unison, thanks to built-in IR receivers and microphones.
HUFF POST LOS ANGELES, États-Unis
17 april 2011
Coachella 2011 Day 2: Arcade Fire Dazzles With Glowing Orbs
Coachella’s second day ended with Arcade Fire on the main stage. During their act, the band released color-changing balls onto the audience, and The Wrap notes that these ethereal orbs “became one of the most prized souvenirs of another hot, crowded and star-studded day at the Empire Polo Club in Indio.”
EXAMINER, États-Unis
17 april 2011 | Jodi Jill
Arcade Fire has LED balloons at Coachella 2011 : Fans showered by colors
In a one-of-a-kind performance for the day, the band had balloon type bubbles to amuse and share with the entire crowd. In a mysterious black box that was above the main stage, it unleashed a stream of LED bubble type balls that the crowd were recipients of during the performance of ‘Wake Up.’
As if it was a giant waterfall of balloons, these fell from above the stage to the crowd below and then the individual balloons lit up. Sometimes it was random colors, other times it was in unison. As the balloons bounced around above the audience it created a visually stunning art piece that gave another element to the show. This balloon phenomenon lasted for several minutes as the items continued to bounce around and go further back into the audience.
Arcade Fire performed for over two-and-a-half hours on the Coachella stage. While fans were tired from the day and the heat, the crowd didn’t mind the cool night air that accompanied the performance as well as the balloons. After the concert was over, the balloons were taken home in the night be concert goers who wanted a little piece of Arcade Fire to remember, even if it glowed in the dark.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, États-Unis
17 april 2011 | by Jeff Miller
Arcade Fire wows Coachella Audience With Light Show
Literally. They actually had hundreds of them, which were released into the audience during the main set’s final song, the epic “Wake Up.” Launched from atop and to the sides of the stage, each sphere was the size of a beach ball — and each, somehow, was magically lit up in varying shades of blue, red and green by remote control, creating an audience-wide light show as breathtaking and all-encompassing as can be hoped for at a concert on this massive scale.
Audience members held the balls aloft through the encore, beginning with the radio hit “Ready To Start” …
NIGHTLIFE.CA, Canada
19 april 2011 | by Michael-Olicer Harding
NightLife at Coachella : 10 reasons why Californians have the best thing going
This time around, the highlight of the night occurred as the band reached the chorus to “Wake Up”: some 1,250 LED-enhanced, blown-up beach balls came crashing down into the crowd, with each ball’s inner glow producing a kaleidoscope of colours when observed from afar. Entitled “Summer into Dust”, the spectacular interactive stunt was made possible thanks to a collaboration between Montreal companies Moment Factory and ESKI with Vancouver’s Tangible Interaction and NY-based Radical Media.
LE JOURNAL DE MONTRÉAL, Canada
23 april 2011
Arcade Fire met plein la vue au festival de Coachella
Cette nouvelle expérience visuelle et sensorielle a été conçue et mise en scène par deux boîtes montréalaises, Moment Factory et ESKI, avec la collaboration du réputé directeur artistique Chris Milk. (…)
Cette mise en scène innovatrice qui s’est échelonnée sur quatre chansons (la dernière du spectacle et les trois morceaux du rappel) a été minutieusement chorégraphiée pendant plusieurs semaines précédant le concert du groupe montréalais. Les couleurs de chacun des ballons sont contrôlées à distance par ordinateur, selon le rythme et l’ambiance des chansons interprétées.
Le coup d’éclat n’est pas passé inaperçu: plusieurs critiques musicaux présents ont souligné ce bon coup dans leurs article…
