Art & Tech in Las Vegas? You bet!
If gambling is not your thing, there are plenty of ways to get dopamine hits from the art and tech in Las Vegas. Sure, there are Dale Chihuly glass sculptures canvasing the ceiling at the Bellagio and blue chip paintings dispersed throughout the city in its grand casinos, but Vegas seems to be on the cutting edge of combining art and tech, only second to Dubai.
The Arte Museum offers an immersive art exhibition space and each piece of artwork delivers not just a vivid visual journey, but also a multi-sensory engagement. In other words, art, kinetic movement, and sound. The immersion is created so that the viewer can encounter with the art or theme that goes beyond space and time. Visuals and concepts are diverse, including perpetually blooming flowers brought to life by generative art technology, nature expressed through spacial designs, hyper-realistic immersions that any art lover would savor. Soundscapes are backdrops to art installations and global composers, susch as Young-guy Jang, have participated in Arte Museum’s programming. Jang’s soundscape ranges in well-crafted, meticulously detailed and lifelike nature sounds for the GARDEN exhibit specifically. Jang has worked on scores of more than fifty films and television shows, including the critically acclaimed "Train to Busan" (2016) and “The Wailing” (2016).
Save your $$$ and book a trip to experience the technological marvel: Sphere Las Vegas. The structure and experience are truly one of a kind. A concert venue and entertainment complex that’s the world’s largest spherical shape, it is known for its LED screens, immersive experiences, and cutting-edge audio. It is easy to detect across Las Vegas’s scape, rising to a height of 368 feet and a width of 515 feet (the largest spherical building in the world). Its exterior is characterized by an LED screen of approximately 580 000 ft. On September 29, 2023, the Sphere opened its doors for the preview of the residency of U2 called, “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere” — and we were lucky enough to catch a show.
Inside the Sphere, visitors have the opportunity to explore various technological showcases on display, including robots or the Sphere sound system. The building is quite large and contains nine floors, four of which are accessible mainly via escalators and elevators. In the room, which holds 17,500 seats, visitors face the real attraction and the architectural feat of the room, its screen. The LED screen has a resolution of 16K (~173,000,000 pixels) and an area of 160 000 ft, making it the largest LED screen in the world. Heightening the visuals is the crisp, state of the art sound system, which consists of a spatial audio system capable of directing the sound like a stereo headset, but also of broadcasting multiple sounds to different locations in the room without disturbing others. This high-tech system makes it possible to even broadcast several languages in different places in the room. Finally, the room contains a 4D system allowing odors or air to be diffused, reproducing the sensation of wind and temperatures.
U2 performing at the Sphere; image from my personal cameral roll.
I don’t gamble and I no longer cocktail, but I found many other dopamine hits in ‘Vegas. The city’s innovative vision to expand creativity into immersive, technological experiences is incomparable. Cutting edge visuals coupled with audio offers one-of-a-kind experiences that are as transformative as they are memorable.
