michael-dean-k/

The Big Duck is a historical landmark in Long Island. A duck farm that sold eggs and produce used a 25’ plaster duck as its highway billboard. It became “world famous” from Robert Venturi’s book on architectural theory, Learning from Las Vegas, which coined the Big Duck as the microcosmic example of “roadside architecture.”

I recently spoke about said duck in a presentation to writers. The farm and the duck are useful metaphors, working in a duality. If you only build the farm, no one driving by will pull over to see what you’ve done. If you only build the highway duck, your farm is a letdown. The trick is to build both: to have the heart of a farmer, but to accept that it’s also your responsibility to appear on the highway.

The Sphere can trigger peak/mystical/transcendent experiences and the corresponding reflection that comes from that. When a concert is able to trigger that 10x in a single show, it’s special. But also, you become aware of the variance, and your expectations rise. You are so attuned to what a peak is, that the average moment is boring or flat, like a planetarium+.

My review/critique of the Dead & Company of the Sphere is relative to what's now possible in a venue. It's less interesting to compare the Sphere to a traditional venue to the new affordances of what a show could actually be. Even though the whole thing is generally mind-blowing, it’s worth it to be critical and imaginative of the experience (after seeing it in its fullness). Instead of just saying “it was insane” or “the visuals are distracting” we should give specific feedback that might even improve the future of shows in that venue. It’s an entirely new medium, and it could be up to fans to articulate what’s working and what’s not.

The Grateful Dead ethos brings a challenge to the sphere, because it's not a pre-determined set; each night is its own arc, and it's also semi-unpredictable if they'll stay in a segment for 3 minutes or 7 minutes. The video DJ is something like a live band member, the interface between the band and the audience. When it's done well, it's sublime, and it's worst it feels like tacky CGI that retracts from an otherwise performance (I felt this about the skeleton motorcycle during "I Know You Rider").

A peak experience at the Sphere would require procedural synesthesia. Procedural means you generate the effects live; there is some of that, but it's mostly stitching 2D video into fixed 3D CGI sequences. Instead, a Sphere "background" should be like an environment of "receivers" that get animated and modulated by the sound itself. A basic example would be a snare drum triggering a ripple. There was little of this! There were some accidental alignments, and those moments were when it felt special. A real-time link would give the experience of being inside the music. It's all about the conversion of sound to shape. This is hard on many levels—design and engineering—and there's a possibility that the Sphere couldn't handle something that was entirely real-time.

Some scattered notes:

• Warping 2D objects into 3D spaces (like they did with the Mars hotel—it was great, but only used once).
• Faster pacing: don’t dwell on a sequence for 3 minutes, but undergo subtle shifts and transformations every 3 seconds.
• Use effects to “green screen” out the musicians and embed them in digital environments (vs. putting them on screens)
• Spherical camera rigs (multi-angle)
• Fan footage (filter for anonymity)
• Lyrics, song name, text
• First person drum cam
• Tracers/looping — distortions in time
• More use of haptics (just drums/space, hit)

In the decade before pot was legalized in New York, if you wanted edibles, it came in the form of a homemade brownie, and it’s unbelievable to think the dosages of those might have been 100-300 mg per brownie. For context, the legal limit now is 5-10 mg per gummy. Here’s what GPT has to say on the level required for edibles to turn psychedelic:

“Edibles become distinctly psychedelic—with altered time perception, visual distortions, auditory hallucinations, ego dissolution, and intense introspection—typically around 50–100mg of THC, especially for those with low tolerance. For some sensitive users, 30–50mg can already induce quasi-psychedelic effects. Beyond 150–200mg, even experienced users can experience full-on tripping: melting visuals, looping thoughts, loss of body awareness, and encounters with archetypal or “divine” mental imagery.

There was zero issue in bringing edibles into the Sphere, and maybe that’s obvious, but I can only compare it to the paranoia of trying to bring brownies into MSG a decade ago (which really was more like eating the whole thing outside—50-100 mg?—before, for fear of getting caught, and then peaking right when the opener is done, to a 45 minutes experience of the chatter of 19,500 people turning into a terrifying white noise). Now it’s legal and destigmatized, and you can take small doses every 45 minutes to space out and control the high. They should probably have an edible stand directly inside the venue. Why not? Is an alcohol overdose not way more troublesome and messy than a weed overdose? Even though it’s all legal now, it will probably take another generation for it to be as casual as alcohol or coffee. Each has their function. Marijuana brings heightened introspection and perception, which is an obvious choice for any concert or aesthetic experience.

1. On route to In'N'Out, we walked past the storefront of a VR arcade, and through the window you could see an overweight man in a headset, fully reclined, probably experiencing a roller coaster. As someone who has given a thousand VR demos, I know the vulnerability in being watched. We found that people were more open to try it if they were in a private room. This is the exact opposite. Hundreds will walk by and see a human vegetable, eyes occluded; he’ll never know you saw him, and you’ll never know what he saw.
2. An article with Jerry Garcia talking about virtual reality in 1989.
3. While the Vision Pro made my skeptical about the future of VR, the Sphere gave me hope. I could imagine albums evolving into multimedia experiences that layers performance, music videos, and lyrics on top of the song.

1. If Vegas is a city of simulations (imitative representations—Paris, Egypt, New York—in space and time), then the Sphere is its ultimate object; from within it, it can take the form of every and any situation. Usually the simulation takes the form of some plastic object in a chaotic skyline, but the Sphere is a Platonic solid. The only other perfect shape is the Luxor. The Luxor symbolizes the past; the Sphere symbolizes the future.
2. Inside of the Venetian—the hotel connected to the Sphere—the shopping mall is pseudo-Italy with eternal daylight, featuring Gondola stripe-shirted chanters, a painted sky of clouds, with pucks (sprinklers) spaced 15 feet apart. It is a 1990's low-tech simulation.
3. The perfect Sphere demo would be a film that transports you to Venice. It would be digital Venice inside of a plastic Venice inside of a sweltering Vegas inside of a desert. Nested simulations.
4. The Aronofsky Sphere demo, “Postcards from Earth,” is a tech demo posing as a documentary. Without a narrative, they couldn’t charge $150 for it. But now everyone is upset for overpaying for what is fundamentally an uninspired, dragged out, half-length movie. The footage itself though is awe-inducing though. I got the chills multiple times. It’s close to full sensory immersion. The haptics on the seat give you something that VR doesn’t have. You can really feel and smell like you’re in the backseat of a car on a bumpy road in India—it should've been in Venice.

• 08:44 AM – From our hotel window, we spotted a dead pixel on the sphere. Rumor has it that this happens often, and a technician will rappel from the top to replace it. There’s no footage of pixel replacement on YouTube—maybe it happens in the middle of the night.
• 11:07 AM – Seeing the mountains while driving out to Red Rock Canyon (outside of Las Vegas) reminded me that the first creative thing I ever got into was photography, probably largely inspired by this location.
• 12:01 PM – Would be interesting to learn how to “read” geology (similar to how someone can read sheet music). A trained eye can look up and down, and recount a detailed history of a canyon dating back millions of years (with far more detail than “this use to be an ocean”—which on it’s own is a wild insight) ... Architecture has a similar function—you can read the past values and abilities of a society by looking at the buildings that have been layered into a place over centuries.
• 01:15 PM – There are a few reasons why depth perception is skewed when you’re hiking out west in rocks (compared to out east in Forrests). 1) Fractality: unlike trees, identical rock formations can occur at radically different scales, giving you no familiar reference or anchor point. 2) With no foliage, you can see something miles away without any obstruction, so something that seems 1 mile away is actually 50 miles away. 3) Perspective… (forgot).

1. Did Jerry Garcia ever comment on the future of robots?” I asked this question to the robot in the Sphere lobby, and it gave me a BS response (effectively, “No, Jerry Garcia, the guitarist of the Grateful Dead, never talked about robots, but people do!”). I really wanted it to infer what Jerry might think about robot chaperons in the lobby of his venues, but I had to ask the human host to ask the robot question, so I couldn’t get too specific.
2. Most people seemed intrigued and revulsed by the micro-expressions in its face, except the guy behind us. He told us that several people have complained to the Sphere management that it makes them uncomfortable. He thinks humanoid robots will be commercially available in 3-4 years. He wants one in his kitchen.
3. Andrew said someone told him that the hardest thing for robots to recreate will be a sense of smell, and so in the future, if androids look identical to humans, they’ll use smell tests as proof of humanity.
4. The outer lobby of the sphere has black reflective floors, glowing hues on the parapets, and tangling installments that if you stare into, will trip you out.
5. The Sphere markets itself as a haven for “22nd century technology,” but the travelators are broken.

1. In JFK there are several tie-die shirts, which is the long-distance way to signal to someone (from 100 yards away) that you are, a Deadhead, and going to the concert, again. If you look closer, there’s less obvious, less multi-color, less standoutish merch (a black shirt with a skeleton as a casino dealer, which tells you they went to the ’24 Sphere residency). The mutual noticing of each other’s merch is something like an unstated invitation to begin a conversation, which if not undertaken, is sort of rude. “Strangers talking to strangers” (isn’t that in Scarlet Begonias?). This taps into some old Tim Leary interview I saw, where his vision for the counter-culture was for instant immersion in real conversation—it was about the transcendence of elevator talk / keeping to yourself; about breaking out of default scripts and internal monologues and to take a risk in creating an interaction with an unknown person for an unknown result.
2. Dead & “Company” has a triple meaning; the first impression is that company refers to the new band members. The cynical impression is that it’s the legal entity that John Mayer owns 51% of. The open impressions is that company refers to all the fans.
3. Unrealistic goal this trip: Talk to 100 strangers. Not every interaction counts (ie: small talk). It only counts if you personally make an effort to extend the conversation one level beyond banter.
4. From the gate you could tell this was a flight of Grateful Dead fans: an older man had a ’90 blue and orange (Mets colored) hat from their garden show (sold out on Amazon). Someone with dreadlocks loudly asked him “how many shows?” I couldn’t hear his reaction, but based on his eyes I wouldn’t be surprised if it were 100+. A man in a bucket hat with his wife brought up “idiots talking,” (during the show) and “Disney Dead.” In first class, I saw a GD sweatshirt, along with a white "Phil Lesh & Friends" hat. On the tram in Vegas: “How many under your belt?” She answered that her dad’s a deadhead, she’s been to 10-12, and she’s going all 3 nights this weekend.
5. My Uber driver has lived in Vegas for 16 years. He hasn’t taken his kids to the Sphere yet (but wants to, and asked me about pricing). We estimated how long it would take for James Dolan to make his money back (he said 10 years, I said 4). He used to be a trucker in New York and South Dakota, found it way too cold there, and is grateful he overcame his smoking addiction.
6. On the ride from Harry Reid airport to the Venetian, somebody graffiti’d the bear on a wall and wrote “dance like Jerry’s watching.”
7. On my first impression of the sphere, it took the form of an obnoxious, 300’ tall yellow emoji. I notice this from the middle of the bridge I’m currently standing on with a homeless man. Now it’s a tie-die riverish 3D lava lamp. Now it shows hippies dancing.
8. I landed a few hours before my friend, so I wanted to walk up and down the Venetian/Palazzo to get my bearings. This place is designed to be a maze (like Venice, except for different reasons). At some point I was walking outside, using my phone, and passed by what looked like two showgirls dressed in fluffy bird suits (insane for 80-90 degree weather), and one of them said “Are you texting us?” I gave a sheepish laugh and kept moving, but this was the first interaction that felt like VR Chat (absurd characters in an absurd place with little inhibition). The next VR chat moment was when I saw a guy walking around with blockish, red, knee-high shoes.

I had multiple, connected dreams about the show last night. Jerry is back and no one cares. Set 1 is only 3 songs that no one has ever heard, and the visuals are effectively a Windows screensaver (just black with a dim purple swirl). They cut it short for an intermission. You guys leave, thinking it resumes the next morning, but I stay and see set 2 which is also only 10 minutes. The band walks through the crowd to exit. I shake their hands and John Mayer tells me “good job.” We realize the Sphere broke and are expecting a refund.