The Dude Who Plays Light for How to Destroy Angels
Yes, I said “light.” His name is Rob Sherdian and Wired has this profile of what he does. (Thanks to John for the link.)
Rob Sheridan, the art director for Trent Reznor’s side project How To Destroy Angels, is up on stage, but he has no instrument. More accurately, he is playing an instrument, but it doesn’t play music — it plays light.
How to Destroy Angels, a band that includes Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, his wife Mariqueen Maandig, Atticus Ross and Sheridan, is the midst of a 12-show tour around the U.S. that includes a Coachella date tonight around midnight. Throughout the show, Sheridan uses a Livid MIDI controller and an iPad Mini running Lemur to tweak, trigger, and control a huge projector and a sixteen-foot wall of LEDs that create a shimmering, three-dimensional cube of light effects.
Set up in front of the stage is a 16-foot tall curtain of 14-inch surgical tubing, which offers a semi-transparent surface for the projector. The effect is a masking, shading substrate for an abstract lighting effect. Panning the video down can cause a cascading rain, or a trickle effect. As the music intensifies, digital dots make a frantic red snowstorm.
yea this light show is something else man. Really not like anything you've ever seen before. An evolution of the live show. It's exactly this kind of evolution and innovation that's been missing from the live show world for way too many years now. Thank you HTDA and Rob Sheridan. You blew my mind.