THE SIGNAL

USHUAÏA & HÏ opening party, held on Saturday 29th April. A massive show for a memorable experience. We had the opportunity to talk with Romain Pissenem, founder and show producer of High Scream, one of the biggest show design companies in the world that worked for this huge show in Ibiza.

Romain told us that the design process started with a very clear marketing brief, a title: THE SIGNAL, a vibration that opens the season and spreads across the entire island.

The set design process started with a moodboard full of references and images: signal loops, colorful soundwaves, magnetic waves and interferences, geometric glitches… 

A lot of stuff selected with a clear aim, merge it with the dynamic of music. 

Romain went on to say that the process has been very fast, and after the moodboard, the creative team started with the first sketches followed by the renders. 

Two venues, USHUAÏA and HÏ, with two spatial differences and challenges.

In the first one, the creative team recreated the sense of propagation of a signal, starting from the center of the stage playing with perspective and coming out to the sides of the stage with the lights. The concept was pretty similar to an explosion of energy that starts from the music. A set where almost anything was built custom.

USHUAÏA is an outdoor space with a “concert setting space”, a clear division between the stage and the audience. The HÏ instead, is a club, and the challenge was to bring the same vibration and concept in a indoor space. In this way the creative team used the roof to link the club all together under a unique huge vibration. They took the USHUAÏA’s concept and flipped it at 90°.

The result has been something enveloping, also because at the HÏ, the center coincide with the crowd, to underline that the energy vibes start from the audience and fill all the space of the club.

A stunning set enlarged by astonishing play of lights.

Romain during our conversation underlined also the importance of having a great team full of talents like High Scream, cause often the time is limited and is necessary to be absolutely coordinated. 

We also talked about one of the key aspect of the show design, that is the importance of making sense. You don’t need a stage full of light and sfx if there is no story behind it, if there is no aim, the show doesn’t work without a narration. The narration is the most important thing in show design, you can have a minimalist set design but have to be a narrative choice and not only a simple aesthetic aspect. At the end we also talked about metaverse and virtual reality that is now widely used in this field. The technology progresses rapidly, but as Romain said, we could consider the virtual reality real, when only we might be able to perceive things and people with our five senses, like in our present world.

A great talk with one of our contemporary legends of show design!

Stage Design, Light Design, Show direction, Video content and production: @highscream

Technical Provider: @sgroupliveandevent

SFX&Lasers: @erlasersandsfx

Special thanks to @romain_pissenem