Tobias Rylander, award-winning production, lighting, and conceptual designer, recently took part in More Than Human: Changing the Human Experience, a conversation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that was part of the Global Design Forum. The event was moderated by Samta Nadeem, curatorial director of STIRWorld, and panelists included conceptual artist Hannah Marshall and artist/designer Melek Zeynep Bulut. The subtitle of the event was "creating impact, wonder, fascination and curiosity," and focused on how the environment, whether at a concert or play or other event where humans gather, can impact their experience of connection.
Rylander began designing lighting for live music in Stockholm, Sweden in his 20s and has since worked extensively in the United States and internationally. Known for his work as a production designer with The 1975, Beyoncé, and Eurovision Song Contest winner Loreen, Rylander’s work extends to screens and staging and has also been seen in fashion, theatre, and conceptual design. Here are some of the highlights from his appearance at the event where he discusses his approach and priorities when creating entertainment environments and his fascination with the physics of these environments.
Tobias Rylander: My medium is light, whether coming from a light or from pixels on a production screen. I think these days we are always hunting something and trying very hard to be stimulated by something. When we go to concerts, the audience has an expectation to be immersed into the work. In the concert industry, we talk a lot about world building these days, creating a whole feeling. But we also have to design for different ways of experiencing the work, not every is just in the moment, a good example of this is The 1975, where we curate and design the show to be experienced through phones. It has become something that helps us connect with others, the live experience is sought after and has become something exclusive, but now we can share the experience.
To make the in-person experience worth it, immersive elements in live concerts are also something that is becoming important to the industry, whether it is smell or temperature, it is the whole experience.
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I usually start a design process by asking the artist or musician the question – what do we want the audience to feel? What do we want to communicate to them? Do we want beauty? Do we want to make the audience disturbed or scared?
In communicating these messages, we also have to cater to cameras which magnify an experience, this can be in terms of clips on the internet or large-scale video screens, it is a big mix of channels to get the message through. For the in-person experience though, these days we start with a model in a 3D digital environment, and it is very real. This way we can make every seat a good seat. I start by catering to the ticket buyer!
Managing how the audience feels is a big part of what we do. The audience does not necessarily know what it was that made them feel a certain way. People sometimes ask me what is good lighting for a concert and I don’t think an audience necessarily knows what they want from the lighting, but it makes all the difference. If they walk away feeling underwhelmed by the experience the lighting can contribute to that because it punctuates moments and change the mood, but if the lighting is good, they walk away thinking the show was incredible. That goes for all sensory experiences.
Here's an example of changing the sensory experience. We did a project with The XX at The Armory in New York and had the audience stand on platforms looking down at the band. The situation was reversed from the usual concert set up. They were very exposed. It began as an uncomfortable situation but eventually became familiar for them and everyone sort of arrived at the same emotional place.
I’ve also been experimenting a little bit with lighting as a physical thing, a moving particle. It is interesting how science and art flow together where we use art as an experimental field for science. One of the things I did was a lighting show for blindfolded people in a three-dimensional sound system. We programmed a really intense lighting show to see if the blindfolded people could feel the lighting. In some situations, your brain starts to compensate for things that you can’t see, and some of the participants started seeing shapes even without light.
I haven’t really used touch as a medium, but my next steps in the experiment with the blindfolded light show is to bring it to blind people. My idea is to write a description of the light around the room in braille and then compare the blindfolded and blind experience. All aspects of the concert or live event should be enjoyed by everyone, even the vibrations are key.