Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

In July 2023, the architectural firm Populous unveiled one of the most incredible spherical structures in the world on the Las Vegas strip. Referred to as “living architecture, The Sphere is a 17,600 seat concert venue covered by screens on both its interior and exterior. The rock band U2 headlined at the opening event, creating an overwhelming experience with its set design, lighting, and graphic design of images on its 15,000 square meters of curved screens. The interior houses a 76 meter high screen which wraps around the audience seating at 180 degrees to provide an immersive experience. While this structure can be considered a contemporary marvel, indeed an immersive entertainment viewing machine melding architecture and media into one entity, it should be noted that Populous were not the first designers to combine a spherical form with media to create immersive experiences. In 1966, the American multimedia artist Stan VanDerBeek exhibited the work, Movie Drome, an installation made of thirty to forty 16 mm Technicolour film and five slide shows set to music projected onto the inside of a metal dome, Defined by VanDerBeek as an “very intense audio-visual environment’ or a large collage, visitors where encourage to lay down on the floor to view the images above. This work was followed by the publication Expanded Cinema by the artist Gene Youngblood, who was one of the first to not only envision video as an art form, but argued that this new medium would bring about a new consciousness This article will revisit the work and theories of VanDerBeek and Youngblood in order to use it as a framework in which to analyse the contemporary Las Vegas Sphere. By doing so, this paper endeavours to use these case studies to define and explain how architecture and media can create a truly immersive experiences.