Episode 171 - Immersive Experiences and The Sphere Las Vegas (with Tim Jones)

The Sphere Las Vegas.

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

The latest episode of the Fantasy/Animation podcast marvels at the era of technologically-powered immersive experiences and high-tech live concert performances through a case study of the Sphere Las Vegas, whose 16K resolution/160,000-square-foot wraparound screen was announced via a series of 40 virtual reality concerts held by U2 between September 2023 to March 2024. Joining Chris and Alex as they navigate these new forms of concert illusion is Dr Tim Jones, an Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Robert Morris University who specialises in animation, film history, media production, and Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) experience design. Topics include fantastic environments and the aesthetic principles of immersion; the promise of limitlessness when liveness and animation collide, and the resultant spectacle of domed displays; site specificity, aura, and the scale of collective experiences; distinctions between contemplation and distraction; and how the Las Vegas Sphere operates as an expensive party trick that helps us understand animation’s own sacred spaces and sensory overloads.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**

Suggested Readings

• Balsom, Erika. The Crowd Is Dead, Long Live the Crowd!” Cinema Scope Magazine, available at: https://cinema-scope.com/features/the-crowd-is-dead-long-live-the-crowd/.

• Brown, William. 2013. Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age. New York: Berghahn.

• Habermas, Jürgen. 1974. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964).” New German Critique no. 3 (Autumn): 49-55.

• Kracauer, Siegfried. 1993. “Cult of Distraction” [1927] in The Mass Ornament, ed. Thomas Y. Levin, 323-328. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

• Ng, Jenna. 2021. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.