How What So Not Developed His Own Immersive Rave—And Found His Purpose

“The storyline of this present I hope conjures up folks to tackle these challenges and defy these people who find themselves pushing them away from the place they belong on this world.”

What does it actually imply for a present to be immersive?

Due to the misleading nature of far too many in leisure, nobody actually is aware of. After the explosion of livestreaming within the wake of the pandemic, the phrase “immersive” was overwhelmed into oblivion by the music trade. It began out as a silver-tongued method to make the metaverse sound interesting, however has since change into nothing greater than hole jargon.

The phrase additionally transports many again to these darkish and lonely occasions, when the unbridled euphoria of raving was changed by “immersive” streams that includes snakebitten DJs who carried out from their bedrooms on tools they might not afford. So when the time got here to purchase tickets to real-life exhibits marketed as “immersive,” we rolled our eyes as an alternative of our cube.

However within the case of What So Not and his formidable immersive rave idea, it is completely different. And after these sold-out exhibits are by way of, they could show as disruptive to the trade as a heavy steel live performance is to a neighborhood bed-and-breakfast.

“That is going to be higher than something anybody’s seen from me,” What So Not, whose actual identify is Chris Emerson, tells EDM.com.

What So Not’s “Anomaly: Immersive Mode” tour, which kicked off tonight in San Francisco, takes its identify from 2022’s Anomaly, his scintillating sophomore album. Nevertheless, its roots return to 2016, when an apathetic Emerson discovered himself “kinda over DJing.”

“I’d been doing it for thus a few years and I used to be at such an thrilling level in my profession,” he remembers. “However I used to be like, ‘I simply don’t love this anymore.'”

But when the pandemic did something—apart from trigger a psychological well being bloodbath—it galvanized us to cherish the little issues that make us most joyful. For Emerson, that was the creativity he derived from DJing.

Emerson says he knew he needed to proceed making music, however this time round, he wanted to ensure he obtained extra out of it with the intention to keep away from the fateful path to burnout. So he drew a line within the sand between his DJ units and his ambitions to deliver one thing a lot larger to life.

“Here is DJing… enjoyable afterparties, simply spontaneous and rogue vibes—no matter I’m feeling at that second,” Emerson explains. “After which right here’s this unbelievable, thrilling, immersive, curated present with the room for all these natural, dwell and intimate moments.”

What So Not’s immersive raves have been within the works since 2019. After producing his track “Anomaly,” which he says “set the dynamic” for the eponymous album through which it finally appeared, he started to conceptualize the bespoke live shows’ phantasmagoric visible path.

“I went about constructing this actuality the place I used to be imagining this dystopian future, and what’s going to occur if we proceed the way in which we’re,” he explains. “Will we simply plug ourselves in and exist in an area that isn’t even in an actual world due to what we could do to it? All of those advanced questions and possibilities and the place they could find yourself—that was the creation of this whole storyline and all of the visible points you’ll see within the present.”

And from there, he was all in. A laissez-faire angle wasn’t an possibility. In spite of everything, you may’t simply let life run its course when you have got an enormous dream.

“The vital a part of the storyline for this entire present and the album is it emulates—in a grander manner—my very own life,” Emerson says. “And the adjustments in ideas about myself and my very own existence, and the way that had such an impression by myself life. And shifted what my very own existence was going to be.”

It is a large second for the famend digital music producer, who minimize his enamel as a child in a little bit seashore city in Australia, the place he says his innate musical creativity was largely written off as an aimless passion. At one level, he “snapped” and have become resolute in his pursuit to comprehend his potential.

“I used to be like, ‘No I’m going to do that.’ That is all I’m going to do and I do know that is the place I must go,” he recollects. “And I went there, and look what it’s change into. I ponder how many individuals on this world are caught within the unsuitable facet of that, the place they’re discouraged. The place they’re introduced down and belittled for doing the very factor they had been meant to be doing—what they had been placed on this planet to do.”

It is clear that the muse of Emerson’s artistry has an existential nature, rooted in the concept that we every have the power to create our personal sense of that means. However regardless of this venture’s impression on his personal life, it is larger than him.

“The storyline of this present,” he continues, “I hope conjures up folks to tackle these challenges and defy these people who find themselves pushing them away from the place they belong on this world.”

Nonetheless, placing your self out there’s powerful. Regardless that he has a crystal-clear imaginative and prescient and the dogged grind to satisfy it, it is troublesome to ship in your convictions after they don’t have any previous experiences with which to tether.

“I’ve sure fears in myself about being up there by myself and having to ship all of it, and ship all of it to such a excessive stage,” Emerson says. “I’ve compelled myself into this spot the place I’m going to have to do this. I’ve compelled myself into this spot the place I’m rehearsing day after day after day for like nearly a month now to get this dialed. To do one thing that I’ve actually by no means accomplished onstage earlier than and ensure it’s above the extent of every thing anybody’s ever seen earlier than from myself.”

So what precisely makes these live shows immersive, you ask?

“You might need seen within the trailer how there’s a sweeping grid. And also you play with the scale of this grid over a stationary background and it appears like issues are literally coming towards you out of the display screen when you’re standing in the midst of the room,” Emerson explains. “There’s moments the place you may even have vertigo. There’s completely different profound moments you’ll discover the place sure objects are present in several areas round you, and while you look across the room, you’ll have a completely completely different digestion of the expertise primarily based on the music and the visible.”

Emerson, who can be performing dwell with modular synthesis onstage for the primary time in his profession in addition to singing and enjoying drums, says he is labored with 4 completely different groups since 2019 to deliver his imaginative and prescient to life. The manufacturing has gone by way of many iterations as a phalanx of visible artists, VJs, lighting administrators, stage designers and extra spent numerous hours creating it. Emerson himself additionally discovered the ins and outs of 3D animation, learning software program like Cinema 4D and Unreal Engine.

With out a large funds, he says the buildout was “brutal.” The venture’s inception coincided with the NFT increase of 2020, when visible artists had been commanding exorbitant quantities of cash to design a measly 15-second clip. So the thought of creating an hour-and-a-half present wasn’t possible.

Furthermore, calibrating the exhibits to cater to completely different venues has been a significant hurdle, a course of Emerson referred to as “very difficult.” One venue, for instance, has a clear display screen à-la Eric Prydz’s subversive HOLO manufacturing, whereas one other has a cuboid stage and onsite installations he has to map round.

“I’ve seen firsthand how troublesome it truly is to tug this off correctly,” he says. “However I understand how quick the tech is advancing.”

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Emerson remembers a time in 2022, when his crew was tasked with creating video clips of photorealistic avatars singing lyrics carried out by actual people. He requested singers to obtain a particular app, document a refrain and ship the file for his crew to load into the Cinema 4D software program, whereby they programmed the voices and synced them with animated characters. Earlier than this tech existed, you needed to rent a crew and pay a five-figure sum to animate the avatar’s actions, he says.

He additionally bought movement seize fits to check out the immersive raves’ visible path, which interpolates depth notion, vanishing factors and different ideas. Emerson’s phrases paint an image of a deeply iterative course of that led to some astonishing—and oftentimes unintended—outcomes.

“Even a few of the errors look so cool and so fascinating,” he digresses. “I’ve had that as effectively with completely different groups, the place they do one thing that’s technically unsuitable however I’m like, ‘That can play so effectively within the present.'”

The true impression of those immersive raves stays to be seen. However one factor is for positive—What So Not has found his goal, and he discovered it on the intersection of innovation and self-acceptance.

“It is simply the beginning of an entire completely different part,” he says. “I’ve type of unlocked a number of issues which are past what I’ve accomplished earlier than and I do know they’re going to get even higher from there.”