For my upcycle project I decided to incorporate both of my passions into it. I want to build a Rave/festival mainstage while incorporating a gaming aesthetic to it. With the previous year being super isolated my inspirations came from my wants and my daily hobbies. Before COVID-19 was in the US, I had several tickets to different raves and festivals however they were all canceled and while being home social distancing I mainly played video games. These two are my main inspirations for my project.
NOTE: The blog post has a vanilla strobe gif towards the end please avoid reading if this will cause you any issues.
Source: https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/03/miamis-ultra-music-festival-canceled-due-to-coronavirus/
Starting with a rave mainstage, the first thing to notice is the number of screens. They all are vibrant with colors and create optical illusions to enhance the audience’s experience. This is coupled with big speakers to accommodate a huge crowd and blast the music. The main stages are usually very big and take a lot of time to plan, however, screens aren’t the only thing that goes on a mainstage.
Source: https://www.vegas.com/las-vegas-events/edc/
Many main stages have nature involved with their design, as seen above at the Electric Daisy Carnival the main stage has a big owl on top of it. Now, this is common with many stages in raving some are spiders and octopuses, and more. The designs all still have bright color and neon lighting to stand out more in the night time.
What makes a main stage though is the changing lights and many times a strobe light effect
Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/ultra-dj-snake-ultra-music-festival-3ohze2GnYWVKoSw12w
I plan to use cardboard to set up the part of the stage and an old controller to create a strobe effect. As I am trying to upcycle I will be creating people out of plastic water bottles to set up a mini stage and mimic what the main stage would look like. I also plan to incorporate old speakers into it so that it’ll have the music as well! To incorporate gaming, that will be the theme of the stage while maintaining the rave aesthetic.
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Hey Alex! Too bad to hear about all the canceled concerts you had tickets for. Hopefully soon we’ll get to go to some. For your upcycle project, are you focusing on bringing the stage aesthetic to your gaming setup, or a gaming aesthetic to a main stage mockup?
Hopefully, we do! I was planning on bringing a gaming aesthetic to the main stage and making that the theme of the stage.
Alex, I think this is a super cool and unique idea for this project. The two aesthetics you chose aren’t two that I would normally put together, but I like that you did, and I like that you had real inspiration behind the idea. What kind of controller will you be using for the strobe effect? Will it be multicolored? I was also wondering if there is a way you could incorporate screens into the stage, as this would be a super cool touch! I look forward to seeing the end result.
I have an old PlayStation 4 controller that I took apart to use the LED. Unfortunately, I cant program the LED as it was connected to the controller circuit so I decided to add the controller as a part of the stage and use the white light it flashes when the power button is pushed. I was thinking of changing the colors of the light by using colored plastic like a mountain dew bottle or something. As for screens, I’m not entirely sure what old products I could use for that but I can look into it!