Viper Marketing & Communications Group

A modern lightshow?

Author: Jim Hardcastle

Jim helps people plan and deliver effective communications. His background in the countryside sector provide him with a wealth of experience in rural marketing. Facilitation, fueled by coffee, with Post-Its at the ready, he’s here to help .

Most lightshows at gigs are good these days but I was really surprised at the lightshow on Tuesday night. I was watching the Dillinger Escape Plan, a very modern noise. Cool, understated up-lighting, strobe back lights and really spooky hanging lights, like something from an abandoned warehouse. They only used white or red lights. No frills. Hardcore. But the most surprising lights were the white squares floating around the crowd.

This live event, for the several hundred of us in Bristol, was being amplified by hundreds of communication amps. Being stood at the back - I don't have the guts to go slam-dancing anymore - I could see all the screens of the mobile phones! I could even watch the gig I was at, on the screen of the phone in front of me as the guy recorded it. The amplification through tweets, texts and emails from the gig must have let thousands of people share in the experience.

When I were a lad watching such fine bands as Nomeansno, Fugazi and Snuff the only way we could share the experience and help to amplify the message was by boring your friends with how good they were and wearing the t-shirt. Recording the event in any shape or form was illegal, although we all looked for bootlegs of the gig.

Now the event has been captured, collected, recorded, stored, sent, distributed...all at the same time it happened. The old traditional paths to distribution are no longer valid.  

- Posted on Thursday 04 Nov 2010 at 17:41 by Jim Hardcastle

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