U2 performs at the opening of the Las Vegas Sphere
Kevin Mazur/Getty
Given U2’s reputation for pushing technical and creative boundaries with their live concerts, it seemed fitting that the band opened the highly anticipated Sphere in Las Vegas on Friday with their most ambitious and moving live show ever: An Electrifying Live -Performance and visual odyssey that unfolds at Sphere’s enveloping, 150,000-square-foot, wraparound LED indoor display.
Built for an estimated $2.3 billion, Sphere is MSG mogul James Dolan and Sphere Entertainment Co. (which was formed in April to unite Sphere and MSG Networks)’s big gamble on the future of entertainment. At 336 feet tall and 516 feet wide, the venue is now the largest spherical structure in the world and houses the largest indoor and outdoor wraparound LED displays. Inside, the wrap-around LED display supports a high resolution of 16K, meaning it delivers images so lifelike that you’ll feel like you’re no longer in a Las Vegas venue but transported into the visual content to become – something U2 used to do to great effect during the two-hour show. Meanwhile, a brand new immersive sound system from Berlin-based Holoplot is configured with around 1,600 speakers to broadcast the experience to all seats in Sphere’s sophisticated design.
In front of an estimated audience of 18,000, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Bram van den Berg (replacing band member Larry Mullen Jr.) took advantage of these opportunities to debut their dynamic new U2:UV residency, Sorge Baby Live At Sphere. An experience that includes all the tracks from the Irish band’s 1991 album ‘Aehrung Baby’, such as ‘One’ and ‘Mysterious Ways’, as well as classic hits such as ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ and ‘With or Without You’. ” U2 also used the opportunity to introduce their new song “Atomic City.”
Since the opening performance of “Zoo Station,” in which the LED display behind the band appears like a concrete wall that slowly cracks as the show begins, U2 and the band’s decades-long creative director, Willie Williams, have used the sphere’s LED display as a canvas for a series of visual art with segments from John Gerrard, Marco Brambilla, Es Devlin, Williams with Treatment Studio and Industrial Light & Magic. These experiences include sending viewers into the desert and onto the water, immersing them in collages and using the display to flash text messages. The stage design resembles a record player, inspired by the art of longtime U2 collaborator and producer Brian Eno. Meanwhile, music during the performance was mixed by the band’s decades-long sound engineer, Joe O’Herlihy.
The show’s third song, “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” features a dense visual collage created by artist and director Brambilla on the theme of spectacle using sampled film clips of Elvis Presley and created with the AI tool Stable Diffusion. “It’s about the death of Elvis Presley and it’s about the creation of the myth of Elvis Presley and also the downfall of Elvis Presley,” Brambilla tells about this segment. “Basically, it’s a parallel storyline between the emergence of Las Vegas from the increasingly dense desert and the different eras of Las Vegas that ultimately end in today’s Disneyland version of Las Vegas.
“I think the medium suits the concept,” he adds of the segment, which also creates a sense of movement in the venue as the image scrolls through Sphere (the speed of the scrolling required careful consideration given movement on a display of this size). is required). and the resolution could easily overwhelm a viewer).
Marco Brambilla’s “King Size” Courtesy of Subject
“Even Better Than the Real Thing” was followed by “Mysterious Ways” before Bono’s moving rendition of “One” effectively changed the pace.
During the show, Bono took a moment to acknowledge Larry Mullen Jr., saying that this was the first time U2 had performed without him since 1978, while also praising replacement van den Berg, saying, ” There is no mistake, there is only one Larry. “Mullen Jr.”
Elsewhere in the show, Bono paid tribute to the evening’s guests, including Sir Paul McCartney and Dr. Dr. He also remembered the late Jimmy Buffet, who died on September 1st.
Near the end of the show, there is a striking section created by Lucasfilm-owned VFX company Industrial Light & Magic that uses the LED display to create a view of Las Vegas from the perspective of a viewer standing in the sphere stands, but like the walls had disappeared, revealing the famous skyline.
Other works include John Gerrard’s artwork “Surrender (for U2) 2023,” which depicts a white flag made up of evaporating plumes of water vapor in a desert landscape. It should point to a world less dependent on fossil fuels.
Es Devlin’s “Nevada Ark” contains sculptures of 26 endangered species selected from a list of 152 endangered species specifically for the state of Nevada. The Ark is a development of the Cartier-commissioned Come Home Again installation of Es at the Tate Modern Garden in London.
Prior to the performance, qualified guests explored the newly opened “Zoo Station: A U2:UV Experience” at The Venetian, located next to Sphere. This exhibition includes a Dolby Atmos-enabled screening area where guests can view documentary footage about the Irish band.
These guests entered via a connecting hallway into the Sphere, which features a huge grand atrium on the ground floor and bars and refreshments on every level. The previously touted AI-controlled robots did not appear in the lobby at this performance.
Friday night’s show was the first of U2’s 25 performances at the Sphere, which will run through December.
Sphere Entertainment Co. has bet that it can use the new venue to usher in the next generation of entertainment, and U2 is off to an exciting start. Achieving this requires continuing to attract innovative artists like U2, who use Sphere’s canvas to create something dazzling and unique.
More broadly, Sphere’s model aims to offer a range of content, and that includes attracting Hollywood talent. Postcard from Earth, the first film created for Sphere – directed by Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky – premieres on October 6th. Meanwhile, the venue’s outdoor LEDs are already showing images, including promotional materials, that can be seen throughout Las Vegas. In fact, this week DreamWorks Animation became the first studio to use the “exosphere” for film marketing, with images tied to the upcoming Trolls Band Together.