Speaking with me from the Coachella grounds in Indio, CA, Sensory Sync’s Director Bryant Place, aka CyberPatrolUnit, discussed the journey that has taken place to create the large Gateway installation on the grounds of Coachella festival.

[Constructing the Gateway. Photo by Sensory Sync/ http://www.sensorysync.com]
With over 20 people on their team working this past weekend and two weeks prior to the event, Sensory Sync built a massive gateway. It took them several cranes and trucks to get the job done, in heat that was sometimes 100 degrees during the day.
“The Coachella installation was one of the most physically enduring projects I’ve ever done,” said Place. It took Sensory Sync and the team which included Stageworks (the company who built the Skrillex spaceship in Miami), and Alexis Rochas (@Stereo_bot), a professor at SCI-Arc, to conceptualize, design and construct the installation.
“From concept to build it took us two and a half months,” Place said.
With top of the line projectors, Sensory Sync VJs and a group of talented freelance visualists did projection mapping on the surface of the structure and then used Derivative’s TouchDesigner software for live manipulation and real-time effects. “Many of our ‘looks’ are generative and can run for extended periods of time,” explained Place.

They created their own inspirational designs and used footage a friend had provided from a camping trip in Joshua Tree a month earlier, and then mixed it with Mixxa VJ software.

The experience was gratifying, not only for festival attendees, who danced around the large illuminated structure at night, but also for Sensory Sync.
“Seeing it light up at night and seeing people’s reactions was great. It made a big impact for the festival. At night it transformed into this whole other thing… it totally transformed the space,” explained Place.
“Because the structure has been under so much analysis and engineering testing, it can stand for 25 years if not dismantled. It can also withstand winds at speeds up to 50 or 60 miles per hour.” Thankfully, winds did not gust that much during weekend one of Coachella.
Festival attendees can catch Sensory Sync’s Gateway Visuals next weekend, during the second weekend of Coachella. If you can’t make it there, you can always follow their twitter for more photos.