Formula One cars are displayed on the outside of the Sphere prior to the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix. Photo / AP
OPINION
There’s a lot of competition for the title, but 2023 may go down as the year of the Sphere.
It’s not very often that something completely new and innovative lands in the public consciousness and becomes instantly iconic.
Las Vegas’ newest landmark is just a baby at less than 2 months old, cost US$2.3 billion ($3.8b) to build, and there’s nothing else like it on the planet.
That creates teething issues, but no-one who has experienced its mind-bending powers first hand would doubt its long-term future as an entertainment venue.
This weekend the MSG Sphere has been a centrepiece of the Las Vegas Formula One Grand Prix, its ever-changeable outer skin of LED lights showing off the city to the world.
In a stuffed landscape of golden hotels, a fake desert Venice, and a lost Eiffel Tower, the bright blob outshines them all, attracting eyeballs from the air, on the ground, and online.
The exterior surface is used for advertising, art, and attention. Its yellow emoji face, passing silent comment on its surroundings, is a regular meme.
It’s getting noticed by people simply looking at it from the outside. But what’s it like to see the Sphere up close and experience what it offers inside?
The motor racing event meant a three-week pause in a series of at least 36 shows by U2, who opened it on September 29. Dates in January and February are now on sale and may not be the end of the rock band’s U2:UV run there.
A Darren Aronofsky film, Postcard from Earth, which was especially made for the Sphere, has been featured on non-show days.
As the F1 track shows, the venue is just a short walk from the Strip, either by footpath outside or via a walkway from the Venetian resort. It’s within easy gawping distance of tens of thousands of tourists.
Outside you can see the individual lights on its hide. Inside there’s a blue hue, with sci-fi décor and, at least back in early October, a new building smell.
It is more of a sitting than standing venue to get the best of the performance and room. The rows at the top are cheapest and are still fine for overall sound and images.
The seats up there are steep to get to and although you soon adjust, there’s probably a good reason why U2 played it fairly straight during Elevation and Vertigo ...
The stage for these shows is a sparse turntable shape that lights in different colours.
The Sphere is dominated by a 15,000 sq m, 16K high-resolution wrap-around interior screen wall. It can show images of very different sizes and at times becomes a communal virtual reality vehicle to a crowd of 20,000.
There are no visible stage speaker stacks. The sound from about 160,000 speakers inside the venue is of very clear high quality. The thunderous workout they get is thrilling, but the sound system copes just as well with the quiet moments, and each individual instrument.
It’s the first 21st century 4D cinematic rock opera house.
It blows away experiences of concerts in sports stadiums or conventionally amped and screened indoor arenas.
It is also vastly visually superior to an Imax theatre screen. It can make the audience feel as though the front of the building is collapsing, has disappeared completely, or the roof is falling on top of you.
The band and audience are like actors on a set. There’s a sense of movement you buy into during the show’s trippy moments.
With all this technological muscle available, U2 and their creative team may have been the best choice to take it for its first drive.
The Irish supergroup has decades of experience at incorporating artistic visual elements in live shows and has previously explored themes about the impact of technology on society.
And the Achtung Baby album the band has chosen to mostly focus on here – it turned 32 at the weekend – is ideal material. It’s epic and intimate, with heavy, timeless themes, an industrial soundscape and dramatic guitar solos.
What’s interesting is that the band – with stand-in Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg for the injured Larry Mullen jnr – has wisely chosen to be restrained and selective in its use of the Sphere’s weapons.
Short sung intros to songs enhance the intimacy and connection with the audience; a mid-section of the performance is acoustic; some songs are lit in a simple way to allow more focus on the music; there’s regular interludes of lightening banter from the stage; and cameras send pictures of the musicians up to the main screen wall as part of the changing backdrops.
The venue’s literally jaw-dropping capabilities are mostly saved for the beginning and the end.
The Fly retains elements of its show presentation from three decades ago but gets an impressive upgrade. The work of three artists – Marco Brambilla, Es Devlin, and John Gerrard – are central to major immersive experiences.
Ultimately, the different balls in the air are juggled and the band isn’t overwhelmed by the visual art. In particular, the Edge shines as his guitars scream through some of his best work. The screen mostly serves the songs, and themes emerge during the show.
Although numerous phone videos from these shows have flooded YouTube, they simply don’t capture the experience of being there. That cannot be stressed enough.
The question of how much to rely on the spectacular and how much to make the audience participants will be faced by all musicians and filmmakers who use the Sphere.
It’s unconfirmed who might follow U2 at the venue. An artist saves on not having to pack up and shift the circus, but the preparation work must be akin to a major film production.
It makes any show at the venue incredibly specific and unable to be transferred to other cities unless other spheres or technological equivalents are built elsewhere.
That may take a while: The Sphere is going through early struggles and made an operating loss of US$98.4 million for the quarter to the end of September.
Still, the Sphere - at least currently - is cool, different, and a place more people will hope to visit and revisit. Whether that survives relentless commercialisation and less dynamic drawcards remains to be seen.
At the moment the Sphere’s mixture of technological advance, the huge financial roll of the dice, the old-fashioned drive to realise a unique project, and the sheer staggering stats involved have caught people’s attention.
As with space travel, great architectural gems, and medical breakthroughs it’s a hopeful reminder of what can be achieved. Bono has described it positively on stage as a “grand madness” and drawn a link between the Sphere and the need for creative people in arts and science to tackle problems in the wider world.
For the foreseeable future music fans will have to travel to see what it can do, perhaps timing a short detour to Vegas on a general holiday to the US west coast.
- Nicola Lamb is a NZME production journalist who visited the Sphere on October 5.
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