In times past, Coachella was only about the music but the huge art installations are increasingly central to the total experience, so much so that one designer calls music festivals the “art museums of the 21st century.” Hear all about it in this segment with Jason Bentley, Alexis Rochas and Andreas Froech.
Thousands descended on Coachella over two weekends to hear bands including Lorde, Pharrell Williams and Queens of the Stone Age.
And when fans weren’t watching bands they could mingle among gigantic art installations: among them an animatronic astronaut (below), a field of large mirror-walls and a huge, colorful mobius strip-like structure called Lightweaver (above).
In times past, Coachella was only about the music but the art is increasingly central to the total experience. Hear why in this segment with Jason Bentley, Alexis Rochas and Andreas Froech. Benjamin Gottlieb reports, below.
His partner at Stereo.bot, Andreas Froech, who spent a week before the concert started building the complex spaceframe structure, adds that Coachella is aiming for an exceptional standard of quality, from the sound and lighting to the quality of construction as well as the vast scale of the installations that, when set against the backdrop of desert and mountains, make for a stunning display.
Learn more about Stereo.bot and the new partnership between Alexis Rochas and Andreas Froech, here. Read this story by KCRW producer Benjamin Gottlieb for background on the growth of art at Coachella.
Images, clockwise from top: Lightweaver, courtesy Stereo.bot; Becoming Human, a play on the intersection of technological innovation and nature; photo by Benjamin Gottlieb; Escape Velocity, an enormous astronaut that meandered across the festival on top of a forklift, photo by Alex Pieros; video of Lightweaver, courtesy Stereo.bot; Keith Greco created a “Main Street” of small pavilions called Archetypes, photo by Alex Pieros; Cyrochrome, an interactive, kaleidoscopic tunnel of color, photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.
