Ray-Ban x Coachella Sensorium

A Trip Through the Sonoran Desert

Anyone who’s been to a music festival can tell you that they’re a separate universe from reality. Time and space both become liminal and ephemeral, and the only thing that matters is the moment at hand. That’s the exact essence that we tried to capture with the RayBan x Coachella Sensorium.

We’d worked with Ray-Ban before – back when we designed, produced, and distributed retail footprints for the Ray-Ban Stories glasses across three continents. Now, we were building on the foundation we’d laid with that project by combining its well-known brand with our main area of expertise: creating a unique experience.

Our mission involved beaming festival goers across several different landscapes in the Sonoran Desert. Over the course of 6 individual rooms (hidden away in an unassuming white-walled structure), we crafted an interactive audiovisual journey to take guests on a jaunt through an energy ritual dreamspace beginning in the heart of the Sonoran and ending in a tropical desert oasis. The spaces included fixtures like super-reflective cactuses embedded with concert lights and interactive pillars of light that responded to visitors’ movements. We even wrote the voice-over script for the installation, a wise spirit guardian that led visitors from room to room.

To build the Ray-Ban x Coachella Sensorium we relied on several of our main proficiencies like audio / visual design and production, UX design, operational and support management, and installation planning and fabrication. With so many interested parties and such a tight timeframe, we also had to pay close attention to account and stakeholder management.

One of our main goals with the project was to create an immersive and interactive experience. We didn’t just want events happening around visitors – they had to be a part of it. To do that, we created fixtures that required guests to physically interface with them. And to help guests really get a feel for Ray-Ban’s Stories glasses, each room required them to snap some photos using the glasses. Then, they had the opportunity to upload them to a social media platform.