Sphere, Part 2

 

[Welcome to the second and concluding installment of my report on Sphere Las Vegas, the new high-tech performance venue conceived and built on the Strip by Madison Square Garden.  It took years in the planning and construction, including delays from the COVID shut-down, the supply disruptions, and the inflation surge.  It ended up costing $2.3 billion and opened with the début of a U2 residency on 29 September 2023. 

[Part 1 of “Sphere,” posted on 24 December, covered such topics as the business arrangements for the shifting partnerships that brought the venue to fruition, the architecture and construction of the world’s largest spherical edifice, the reception by Las Vegans and visitors to the city of the concept and the rising structure, and some details regarding visiting Sphere as an entertainment site.

[Part 2 below will cover the tech of Sphere, both exterior and interior, and some of the responses to the structure as a place to see concerts and other events.  As I’m not tech savvy—I can barely get my laptop to work the way I want it, and I still haven’t really mastered my cell phone—I found looking into that first topic particularly interesting.  I hope readers, including the many of you who are more advanced than I in this area, will find my efforts informative.

[One word of caution/recommendation: I haven’t repeated in Part 2 identifications, explanations, or definitions that I gave in Part 1.  If you haven’t read the first installment, it would be a good idea to go back and catch it before proceeding to avoid having to toggle back and forth to look up that information.]

Now I think it’s time to tackle the technology of Sphere—the aspect of the venue that, alongside its shape, distinguishes it from all other entertainment venues.  Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent . . . well, I guess we’ll have to see.

Let’s start with the exterior of the globe, since that’s what people see first.  In fact, the 580,000 square feet/54,000 square meters of LED light panels covering the Exosphere make Sphere visible from several miles away.  According to the website Virtual Events Group, it can be seen from outer space—though the Washington Post reports only that it “seems like it could be seen from space.” 

The exterior screens are fully programmable to create a dynamic exterior display with almost limitless creative possibilities.  “The possibilities for artists, partners, and brands to create compelling and impactful stories to connect with audiences in new ways,” are compelling to Sphere’s senior VP of brand strategy and creative development.  Among other spectacles, Sphere can “look like a black hole has opened up or a Christmas snow globe has landed in Vegas.”

At the first illumination of the exterior LED panels, the Independence Day spectacle last July, along with “LED fireworks, American flag effects, nature scenes, and some sci-fi visuals, perhaps the most stunning use of the world's largest artificial spherical structure was projecting some other famous spheroids from around the solar system on its display, including the moon, Mars, and even Earth itself.”

“Sometimes it’s a gargantuan basketball,” reported New York’s Observer.  It can also do an emoji face, a gigantic jack-o’lantern, and a tennis ball.  “And recently,” added the Observer, “it loomed in the skyline in the guise of an anatomically correct eyeball keeping watch over the strip.  These and other vividly realistic illuminations are stopping traffic across the city as locals and tourists pause to take in Sphere . . . .”

Using cameras placed at strategic locations around Las Vegas which can live-stream images of the cityscape surrounding Sphere, the orb can even perform a neat trick.  When the pictures are displayed on the LED panels of the Exosphere, it seems to disappear as viewers “see through” it to the terrain in which Sphere stands.  It’s called “see-through” or “cloak” mode.

Not all Las Vegans have been pleased or amused.  The Washington Post asserts, “Some see a technological marvel, while some see a gigantic spherical billboard that’s a prime distraction for drivers.”

Speaking of that billboard: the website Boardroom reports that “a one-week advertising campaign [on the Exosphere] could set brands back $650,000.  For one day (four hours, really), expect to pay $450,000.”

One Las Vegan nevertheless told a local news outlet “that he thinks the glowing ball is ‘the most incredible thing ever built in the world. . . .  I’ll look at it every night.’”  Another wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), “This is the future right here.  Vegas is doing it right.”

Others have had different reactions.  “I would not want to see some of that from my hotel window after a late night out Vegasing,” wrote a visitor, and another resident posted, “Who wants to do some mushrooms and watch this thing all night?”

Now, let’s move inside Sphere, arguably the region of greatest interest.  It measures out at 875,000 square feet (81,290 square meters) of floor space.  As I mentioned earlier, the globe has nine levels, counting the basement, with luxury suites—13 at Level 3 and 10 at Level 5—which are expected to be acquired by corporate sponsors.  

Sphere’s interior, largely column-free to preclude obstructions to sight or imagination, was designed by MSG Entertainment (before the spin-off) and hospitality specialists Icrave, a New York City-based firm that specializes in nightlife venues such as lounges and clubs. 

Icrave’s founder and CEO, Lionel Ohayon, proclaims, “The experience doesn’t begin at the theater.  As soon as you pass the threshold of the Sphere, you are in the show.”  That’s because every space at Sphere is designed to generate a similarly surreal frisson as the entertainment event.

Sam Lubell of Fast Company, a monthly print and online business magazine published in Washington, D.C., that spotlights technology and design, describes the visitor’s first encounter with the inside of the orb this way:

The Sphere is dominated by an eight-level atrium, ringed with rounded mezzanines and bisected by crisscrossed escalators and flying bridges.  It’s as immersive and otherworldly as the theater itself.  To increase reflectivity—and a sense of otherworldly limitlessness—the floor is made of shiny, highly polished black terrazzo.  There are virtually no straight lines anywhere.  The lighting system, says Ohayon, “has a personality that can speak to you,” with virtually every surface lit by indirect LED illumination that can be customized for intensity, temperature, or color to match the mood or theme of any show.  Entry and exit thresholds consist of low archways that compress you and then dramatically release you into taller spaces.

The whole experience—of the setting, if not the performances—seems to be intended to evoke space travel, as if you’re making a stop-over at a space station in the late 24th century.  London’s Daily Mail declares that Sphere “looks like it landed from outer space” and Journey, a business consulting and services company, whose website bills itself as the “Next-Gen Customer Experiences,” posts that “Sphere . . . catapults the stadium experience into the future.”

But what about the auditorium, the performance space itself? 

Well, to start off, it’s called the Bowl, with a volume of nearly 6 million cubic feet (169,901 cubic meters), seating 17,385 spectators.  (The Bowl can hold a 20,000-strong, all-standing audience.)  The interior is big enough, the owners say, to hold the Statue of Liberty, from torch to base (151 feet without the pedestal; 305 feet total [46 meters/93 meters]). 

The stage is portable and adjustable to any size; it can even be removed for films.  Seating covers approximately two-thirds of the interior, with the stage occupying the remainder of the space.  The general admission (GA) floor is right in front of the stage, and there are four different distinct seating levels: 100, 200, 300, and 400.

The primary floor setup features a GA pit/floor area right in front of the stage, offering an up-close experience.  In this area, seats are not assigned.  The seats in the 100 section are closest to the stage, which are great for viewing the stage and the live performers; they’re not so good, however, for watching the screen, which is so big that it’s impossible to see any detail.  By most spectators’ experience, the over-hang of the 200 tier blocks the view from many 100-level seats.

Most advisors say that the 200 level is the best area, especially for concerts.  (It’s also the most expensive.)  For movies like Postcard from Earth and other video presentations, the common advice is that seats in the 300 and 400 level are best because they afford the best view of the screen.  (The 400 level offers the least expensive seats available.)

The common wisdom, especially as promoted by Sphere Entertainment and the Venetian Resort, is that there are no bad seats at Sphere.  Many attendees who’ve posted comments online disagree.  The over-hang I already mentioned was a frequent complaint from unhappy visitors, and several commented on the steep incline of the stairs accessing the upper tiers.  At least one commenter said that “it felt like being in a cramped airplane seat.”

The screen at the Bowl is about 3⅓ football fields (American—without the end zones)—160 square feet (14,864.5 square meters).  It’s the world’s largest and best-resolution and the giant LED screen wraps over and behind the audience, delivering a totally immersive visual environment.

Variety’s Willman describes a couple of effects created in the Bowl during U2:UV:

There’s one segment where the video screen turns this cornerless room into a rectangularly shaped space, and you can only guess at how the designers had to bend the laws of physics to create that illusion on a circular screen.  The most jaw-dropping moment of the night, arguably, comes when you look straight up and see what appears to be an elevator made up of data descending down toward you.  It can only be described as a very slow-motion, more abstract version of the chandelier dropping in “Phantom of the Opera.”

All seats in the auditorium have high speed internet access.  Sphere’s engineers devised an ultra-fast wireless environment so that 10,000 people can interact with the venue’s LED screen simultaneously from any seat in the house.

Some seats are also equipped with an infrasound haptic system to vibrate to match whatever is being depicted on screen, such as a helicopter ride or an earthquake.  4D machines that create wind, temperature, and scent effects are also a part of the Sphere experience.  The system’s embedded in the flooring system, which utilizes technology to convey bass through the floor for guests to “feel” the experience.

“When you’re riding a Harley, you’ll feel the pistons pumping,” says James Dolan, MSG’s CEO.  “When lightning strikes, you’ll feel that, too.”  Sphere Entertainment asserts that it can program and control the infrasound seating and audio systems to simulate a range of amazing sensory effects from the swell of the tide to a total shift in gravity.

(4D, or 4-D, refers to an ordinary three-dimensional experience supplemented by synchronized physical effects.  Infrasound, or low-frequency sound, is sound under the lower limit of human audibility; however, at higher intensities it’s possible to feel infrasound vibrations in various parts of the body.  Haptic [of or relating to the sense of touch] technology targets users’ tactile sense.) 

Sphere’s effects units can technically achieve wind blasts of a slight breeze up to 140 mph, enough to blow the roof off a building.  The temperature regulators can create everything from the ideal setting of Sphere’s AC system to the degree drop it takes to make spectators feel as if they’re immersed in a 4D blizzard.

“The sound is a new technology,” said Nick Tomasino, MSG Entertainment’s construction VP, “never implemented before, using beam-forming technology, which allows you to have the same experience whether sitting in the back or the front.”  (Beamforming is a type of radio frequency management in which a wireless signal is directed toward a specific receiving device, rather than sending it from a broadcast antenna to be spread in all directions.) 

At Sphere, the acousticians have ensured that every seat in the house gets optimal audio reception.  Furthermore, according to Sphere Entertainment, the venue has the ability to direct sound like laser beams.  Sphere’s sound system can deliver unique audio experiences to different listening locations all across the orb.  

According to Chris Willman of Variety, a demonstration for the press “showed how it is even possible to make it so that patrons sitting three seats apart could hear a lecture in different languages, with no bleed-over.”

Sound isn’t the only tech element Sphere’s techies can manipulate.  Visitors to the Vegas globe may be transported to an array of places, from far out in space to the bottom of the ocean.  The lighting system can simulate how light filters through different environments so Sphere can capture the effect as close to nature as possible.

As Caryn Rose of National Public Radio noted of the Bowl in its entirety, something’s “conspicuously absent”:

There are no speaker stacks, no carefully positioned hanging PA columns, no lighting rig.  As [U2’s] Bono and Edge gleefully told [New Zealand radio DJ] Zane Lowe and everyone else: "The entire building is a speaker."  What that means from a practical standpoint is not just immersive clarity, but also an incredible balance.  At the Sphere, Bono can speak in a normal, conversational tone into the microphone and everyone can hear it. 

Now, I want to have a look at what people who’ve experienced Sphere as an entertainment venue think of it.  Sphere “is living architecture,” says Guy Barnett, Sphere’s Senior VP of brand strategy and creative development, “and unlike anything that exists anywhere in the world.”

How does the first-person experience measure up?

Bono, U2’s lead vocalist and primary lyricist, said it himself: “This whole place feels like a distortion pedal for the mind.”

Actor and producer Aaron Paul, best known for Breaking Bad, was at the U2 première and averred that “U2 is arguably one of the biggest rock bands ever to exist, and this is arguably one of the greatest—if not the greatest—music venue on the planet.  We did a tour [inside Sphere] a couple of months ago.  Minds were blown.”

I’ve already quoted Chris Willman’s Variety review of U2’s opening performance at Sphere, so to narrow in on his opinion of how it fit into Sphere, let me return to his notice.  Of the rock band’s première, Willman wrote:

Not to take any credit away from U2, but the most impressive moment of the Sphere show may be when you first walk in the room.  And that happens on two levels, literally.  Above you, that massive domed ceiling has been made to look like you are in some industrial grain silo that has been constructed sky-high.  (One seatmate described the feeling of looking up at this while waiting for the show to begin as “terrifying . . . but not in a bad way.”)  It’s an immediate indication of some of the offbeat photorealism you will be in for.  But at the same time, if you’re on one of the lower levels of the multi-tiered auditorium, looking out over the general-admission SRO floor, and block out what’s hovering over you (which is surprisingly easy to do), you suddenly feel like you’re in the world’s coolest nightclub.  Or at least mega-club; at or slightly above floor level, it kinda just feels like the Hollywood Palladium, albeit with more of the audience wrapped around the sides of the stage.

The reviewer from arguably the entertainment industry’s premier journal also asserted that

it’s the audacious hugeness, not the Let’s Get Small interludes, that “U2:UV” will most be remembered for.  It is, at its giddy and delirious best, a slide down the surface of things, to recall a prophetic phrase that might have foretold the very existence of Sphere, a venue that invites you to spend a half-hour at a time thinking or talking just about its interior and exterior surfaces, including a ceiling that reaches to 366 feet tall.  These surfaces feels [sic] like they should be measured in square miles, not square feet, but U2 does not feel dwarfed in their glow.

He added that the show is accompanied by “a series of settings . . . that blow your mind, then give it a helpful rest, and then return for further sensory overload at the end.” 

Of the sound, which Willman dubs “phenomenal,” the Variety reviewer wrote that “it was more wonderful than anything we’ve ever heard in an 18,000-capacity venue.”  Reminding his readers of Sphere’s “system that micro-targets concertgoers wherever they’re sitting,” Willman reported that “the most basic goal, of offering studio-quality sound on a massive scale, seemed to have been met.”

Overall, Wilman concludes of Sphere as a performance venue:

“U2:UV” does come off managing to feel like actual rock ‘n’ roll.  It also feels like Circus Circus marrying some kind of foreign-film aesthetic.  With all the heart and soul and silliness and grandiosity appropriate to the host city, this might be the best shotgun wedding Las Vegas ever presided over.

(Circus Circus Las Vegas is a hotel and casino located on the northern Las Vegas Strip.  It features circus and trapeze acts, as well as carnival games, at its Carnival Midway, and an indoor amusement park, Adventuredome.

(I stripped out Willmer’s assessment of U2’s rock performance itself—and I’ll be doing the same for other evaluations.  As I suggested in Part 1, check out the review online for that.)

Another reviewer, Jackson Arn of the New Yorker, connected Sphere to “immersive” art experiences (like “van Gogh warehouses,” on one of which I reported on ROT on 10 and 13 January 2022):

Immersion bombards and overpowers; it commands the viewer to surrender.  At heart, it’s a prayer that we can spend a few moments in a state of pure attention, the sort once rumored to exist in monasteries.

All art makes some initial pitch for attention.  In immersive art, sustaining attention isn’t the means; it’s the point, the work’s way of justifying itself.  As such, the pitch is almost always the hard sell—intense, elemental sensation, immediately delivered.  Sometimes the method of immersion is scale; often, it’s eye-wrecking color, or some all-out assault on the visual field.  This sounds vaguely tyrannical, but immersion, as an ethos, is sweetly democratic.  It treats all of us the same and requires the same thing from each of us—usually, nothing.

(I feel the need to mention that, as an antidote to Sphere, Arn gives a marvelous review and description of an artwork near Las Vegas called City (1972) by Michael Heizer.  It’s a kind of gigantic earthen installation that took 50 years to complete, measuring 1¼ miles long and more than a quarter of a mile wide – 2 kilometers by 0.4 kilometers; 200 acres or 80 hectares. 

(Arn’s review of Heizer’s installation is too long, and too much about City and not enough about Sphere, to reproduce here—but I heartily recommend reading it at The Sphere and Michael Heizer’s “City,” Reviewed: Two Paths for Immersion | The New Yorker or in the issue of 20 November 2023.)

In Billboard, Katie Atkinson declared, “Nothing can prepare you for the magnitude of experiencing a concert in this venue.”  (Earlier, Atkinson expressed the opinion that “U2 was exactly the right band to welcome the mind-blowing space.”) 

Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene determined:

By any measurement, it was a stunning success.  The Sphere somehow managed to live up to years of hype with its dazzling 16K resolution screen that transported 18,600 fans from the stars in the night sky to a surreal collage of Vegas images, the arid deserts of Nevada, and the information overload of Zoo TV [a worldwide concert tour by U2 in support of their album Achtung Baby in 1992-93].  And the sound wasn’t the sludgy, sonic assault you typically get at an arena or stadium concert.  It is clear, crisp, and pristine, making earplugs completely unnecessary.  As advertised, this was a quantum leap forward for concerts.

Before the show starts, upon first entering Sphere, Greene observed, “With the screens off, it felt like you were walking into the world’s largest IMAX theater.”  But when things get going following a sort of warm-up, “the ludicrous scope of the place became apparent.  It’s impossible to even take in everything at once since the screen stretches far beyond anyone’s scope of vision.  All you can do is take the ride and absorb as much as possible.

As for Sphere’s impact on the pop music scene in the future, Greene predicted: “Whatever happens going forward, it’s hard to imagine a better proof of concept for Sphere than this U2 show.  It’s almost painful to imagine going back to a dumpy sports arena for a show after experiencing something like this.”

In contrast, however, Steven Hyden on UPROXX objected that “I’m having trouble imagining a band that isn’t U2 in that space.” He expanded his thought: “Is this extremely expensive bowling ball at all practical for non-Irish stadium acts who don’t have 18 months to prepare a two-hour spectacle?  Plenty of artists could play at this venue.  But who should?”  And he explained:

The Sphere is overpowering and ridiculous, technologically advanced and rooted in an old-time “more is more” show-business sensibility, and supported by some of the industry’s most powerful players even though it’s possibly unsustainable.

I read many professional reviews of both U2:UV and Sphere Experience/Postcard and a lot of the online remarks from ordinary entertainment-seekers.  My impression is that the overall response leans toward the positive, with a good number of really enthusiastic reactions to the experience.  There was a substantial representation from visitors who ranged from disappointed to angry, however, usually for one or another specific complaint.  (The ticket price was a big issue, and the seating, as I noted above.)

The majority seem to have been impressed with the various tech accomplishments—videos, sound; very few mentioned the haptic embellishments—and the response to the events themselves was pretty evenly split.  Except for the U2 concert—that got universal raves from both concertgoers and journalists. 

A fair number of commenters had complaints about something at Sphere but wrote them off as glitches one should expect from a new and innovative venue on its shake-down outing.  More than a few seemed concerned, as Steven Hyden of UPROXX posted, that Sphere would have trouble finding appropriate talent to fill its schedule and make successful use of its special features. 

Bono was the only artist I found who said anything about Sphere as a place to perform—but, then, his band are so far the only performers to occupy the place.  Darren Aronofsky spoke to the Hollywood Reporter about making Postcard from Earth, and he described a lot of the tech that went into shooting the film, but he didn’t say anything about displaying the movie at Sphere.  (For those interested in the cinematography largely newly invented for creating Postcard, read “Darren Aronofsky Describes His Journey to Creating the First Movie for the Las Vegas Sphere” by Carolyn Giardina at Sphere Las Vegas: Darren Aronofsky on ‘Postcard from Earth’ Film – The Hollywood Reporter.)

As for Sphere’s impact on concertizing in the future, I guess we’ll just have to wait for a few more performances and let the artists and managers determine where this new platform will take them and their audiences.

As for those who insist that only U2 is capable of fully making use of Sphere as a performance space . . . well, maybe if the London Sphere and any others still in the conception stage actually get built, more artists—even in other forms besides music—will reimagine what they do and create new work for a Sphere’s attributes. 

That’s what happened with film and television, isn’t it?  Even the legendary stage musical team of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II, often labeled the greatest of the 20th century, pivoted to film for State Fair (1945, 1962) and then TV for Cinderella (1957, 1965, 1997).

In the end, at least for Sphere’s inaugural outing, the general response seems to be what a friend of mine quoted a neighbor who went there as saying: “It was fantastic.  We loved it.  Everywhere you looked, there was something to see.”