The agitated crowd is the space hack for live performances at the time of COVID-19.
Innovative indie group Flaming Lips held two shows in Oklahoma this month, protecting their fans and themselves from each other, placing everyone inside their own inflatable bubbles to make the show “safer than going to the supermarket,” he said. lead singer Wayne Coyne.
“We got everyone together and took them row by row to their bubbles,” Coyne, a longtime bubble enthusiast, told Rolling Stone last month about the strategy. “Once you get into the bubble, you can do whatever you want, and that’s the beauty of it. This is what we spend most of the time discovering. The musical part of that, we solved it. “
Each bubble accommodates up to three people, and each show can accommodate up to 100 bubbles, the BBC reported on the “space bubble” configuration in the Oklahoma City site ‘s Criterion.
The method does not only seem to work, but hardly diminishes the euphoria of live music: the performance video shows an enthusiastic audience dancing while the confetti reigned, the bubbles making them safer, but not slower to react to the show.
“They did this !!” Coyne’s wife, Katy Coyne, captioned an Instagram video of one of the shows. “The Flaming Lips successfully performed their first show at Space Bubble last night!”
Flaming Lips have been working on the bubbly audience concept for months and used plastic balls in October as well. “It seems absurd, but. . . it’s becoming serious and real, ”Coyne told the BrooklynVegan music blog before the show. “We are starting to prepare to do a real show where. . . there are three people in each of these space bubbles and we play. . . two shows a night, and getting a large audience each time. “