I’ve been aware of Sphere since it was a hole in the ground, watching it rise gradually out of the desert—so ugly really in many of its stages, including the stage NAB where it was just a big vacant dystopian eye, inert and bleak, making everything around it look small and in service to the Darth like orb, a parking garage that was way too big.
Still, even at that depressing stage, I thought about the techs inside, the designers at their computers, the code writers, the fabricators, the producers, mixers, the literal AV army that lived and breathed this edifice into being. I felt for them knowing how tantalizing that work is, and how important you feel in your little part, the camaraderie and adventure of making something that’s never been made before with a budget that is at once unimaginably big and never enough. What I didn’t know at the time is they were working on a triumph, and a world-changing platform. I wonder if they knew. It could have been a black elephant. These things are never 100% certain.
But even in my most optimistic projections, I did not imagine the breadth of this platform. I expected some wizardry, but not at the scale that was accomplished—not the roller coaster of sight and sound that would be enabled. All hail the content creators and their inspired creations, both the produced and real time content. But before any of that could be unleashed, there had to be a platform. And what a platform—so almost laughably powerful and fluent, even with the glitches. Feel free to write me and say otherwise.
For me personally, Sphere falls into the legacy of the first Spiderman ride—on film at Universal Florida, a seemingly impossible quest, that is now pretty routine, now digital, and long eclipsed. Yet at the time, those technical innovations sparked imaginations and a generation of creatives drafted off it. It was career making and it set a standard that creatives ran with.
On such a larger scale, Sphere seems like this generation’s new horizon. It stands ready to incorporate all that creatives will try, in immersive, AI, interactive, and yes even signage and marketing.
Part of its power comes from the empire around it—from the network of MSG and Sphere Entertainment. Will Sphere succeed as a business entity as it did with technology? Looks like they plan to try. In addition to Sphere Immersive Sound and the interior LED display plane, Sphere also features patented 4D technologies such as infrasound haptic seating, and various atmospheric and environmental effects, such as warm breezes, evocative scents and changing temperatures, to create multi-sensory experiences. Will storytellers use all that? Will the kingdom be viable? Time will tell on that, but I’m aware as I write this of the many smaller, individual story arcs that will unfold for all the people who built this platform. What did they learn and where will some of them take it? Will this be a seminal career moment for them to be part of this?
