Phish has been hosting multi-day camping festivals since 1996. At many of these events, the band often performs a “secret set” at an unexpected time in an unconventional set-up. For their 10th festival, 2015’s Magnaball, the band teamed up with Moment Factory to create a mammoth multimedia installation to serve as the vehicle for the band’s surprise.
The festival took place at the Watkins Glen International speedway in Watkins Glen, New York, and the team used the infrastructure of the speedway, notably a massive scaffolding behind bleachers that overlooked the racetrack, to create the installation. To mask the bleachers and to contribute to the “vintage sci-fi” aesthetic of the festival, the team devised a ‘drive-in theatre’ scenario, transforming the bleachers into a 183 foot-long projection screen. Silver cars spotted the field as ghostly light sculptures that added a mysterious and immersive quality to the drive-in feeling and provided the ambience of an abandoned post-apocalyptic theatre during the daytime.
The “secret set” came to life at the Drive-In late on Saturday night as Moment Factory VJs played visual counterpoint to Phish’s fully improvised nearly hour-long jam. Working from a toolbox of visual assets and blending them in our VJ software, we layered custom video and stills with generative content. At one exciting moment, the band played to a giant moon moving slowly across the screen, responding with a bold rhythm. We were thrilled to join Phish in this unique collaboration, going back to our VJ roots with a live show environment.
