Secret Sky
Secret Sky was a virtual music festival presented by Porter Robinson that streamed live on YouTube, Twitch and a dedicated website on the 9th May 2020. It was a 14 hour musical extravaganza that featured over a dozen electronic music producers, and also served as a fundraiser for the Musicares Covid-19 relief fund; providing support for music industry professionals who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
I managed to watch 9 hours and it was completely worth losing some sleep over. The visuals differed between each artist but every one was an absolute feast for the eyes and of course the festival was filled with absolute bops and bangers. It was great fun to see/be a part of the live chat flooded with fans.
The ‘virtual auditorium’ was also a thing. In partnership with Active Theory, visiting secretskyfest.com would drop you into a space where the user was able to control a little coloured squiggle in amongst the sea of other user’s squiggles. Naturally the site was overwhelmed with visitors watching the stream prompting some problems with loading into the auditorium, this began the 71 club in the YouTube live chat; users banding together over being stuck at 71% loaded on the page. It was surprisingly uniting.