Elsewhere is a beloved Brooklyn music institution and the heart of a sprawling and inclusive community of emerging music fans. As of April 2020, the COVID crisis had effectively shut down live music performance in NYC, and while many organizations have turned to streaming to try to deliver facsimiles of the experience of seeing music live, our partnership with Elsewhere focused on imagining an entirely new medium in which to experience live music in the most interactive, internet-first way possible.
Nowhere does this approach make more sense than Twitch. With their support we dreamed up Elsewhere Sound Space, a comedy sci-fi space spa cult music show with an improvised, nonlinear format driven by bidirectional communication between the talent, the software, and the audience.
To make it happen, we designed and built a hybrid uber-application and COVID-safe studio in the quiet halls, lobbies, and coat check of Elsewhere itself.
The production process for every episode involves a blank sheet of paper and an attempt to break down conventions and subvert expectations while winking at tropes from traditional storytelling.
The fourth wall is transparent on Twitch and our dynamic, software-enabled visual storytelling allows us to interrogate the show-viewer relationship in new ways every time we build a scene.
When designing the systems and software for the program, we approached every touchpoint as a distinct user experience design task. On-site our users include the host, the guest, the technical director (us), the call-in producer, and the sound tech. Online our users are the viewers watching live on Twitch.
Every user’s needs, sensory bandwidth, and interaction capability profiles differ based on their role in shaping the experience, and thus every user’s interface to the show is entirely custom and evolves rapidly with the changing capabilities and needs of the show.
The program offers viewers the ability to influence the course of the plot through two flavors of voting, by purchasing attention from the host via the channel points system, by using keywords in the chat, and by contributing bits (cheering) to progress towards comedic moments onscreen.
For a more in-depth discussion of interaction design for the show, check out our blog post on the topic:
Mass Interaction Design: One to Many to One
In the host’s space, a teleprompter-like heads-up interface gives realtime information about users’ interactions, messages in the chat, new subscribers, prompts from backstage, and bit contributions, while displaying run of show information and a view into the guests’ space.
In their studio, the guest is flanked by four screens displaying the chat, the live program feed, a mirrored view of the guest themself knocked out of their chromakey background, and messages from the technical director.
Among the growing list of features of the core application that drives the show are:
a full-featured scene-building production video switcher
realtime green screen and face-tracking
interactive special effects
use of the Twitch API, PubSub, and ICQ chat architectures to enable dozens of forms of fan interaction
an omniscient and eerily timely ticker
dynamic and interactive titles, graphics, and credits
3D ‘virtual production’-style sets and cartoonish 2D compositions featuring incredible artwork by Dark Igloo
squishy, tactile interactive spaces
dynamic physical control surfaces for host and technical director
on-set system-controlled practical (physical) gags like a receipt printer and motorized candy machine
live video callers composited into 3D scenes
chat-bots
live control of music playback and sound effects
etc. etc.
Elsewhere Sound Space aired monthly on Twitch in early 2021 to live audiences of over 10,000 and has been covered in:
Harper’s Baazar
Billboard
Time Out
Derivative
Brooklyn Magazine
BK Reader
The Hype Magazine
Musical guests included Princess Nokia, Starchild and the New Romantic, Paperboy Love Prince.
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Elsewhere Sound Space
Created by: Elsewhere Studios x Hard Work Party
Technical Direction,
Show Software,
Realtime Visuals:
Noah Norman / Hard Work Party
Art Direction: Dark Igloo
Creative Direction: Jake Rosenthal (Elsewhere) & Noah Norman
Produced by: Jake Rosenthal (Elsewhere)
Creative Writing:
Ashok "Dap" Kondabolu, Dark Igloo, Peter Smith, Noah Norman
Studio Direction: Chris Madden
Sound Design: Chris Madden
Live Editing: Noah Norman / Hard Work Party
Live Sound Engineer: Alex Slohm
Production Manager: Alex Pacheco
Media Strategy: David Garber
Prop Styling and Production Assistance: Turiya Madireddi
Music Licensing: Rachel Byrd
Talent Booking: Rami Haykal (Elsewhere)
Production Consult: Chris Willmore
Still Photography: Luis Nieto-Dickens
Twitch Glue Code: Charles Reina
Special Thanks:
Will Adams, Jesse Ozeri
Elburz Sorhkabi, Charles Reina
Dandi Does It,
Lauren Brady, Samuel Bader
Landon Thomas,
elekktronaut, paketa12
Built with love and TouchDesigner.
