How Las Vegas’ Sphere Actually Works: A Looks Inside the New $2.3 Billion Arena
If the United States of America is the Roman empire of our time, surely it must have an equivalent of the Colosseum. A year ago, you could’ve heard a wide variety of speculations as to what structure that could possibly be. Today, many of us would simply respond with “the Sphere,” especially if we happen to be think-piece writers. Since it opened last September, Sphere — to use its proper, article-free brand name — has inspired more than a few reflections on what it says about the intersection of technology and culture here in the twenty-first century, not to mention the considerable ambition and expense of its design and construction.
A $2.3 billion dome whose interior and exterior are both enormous screens — visible, one often hears, even from outer space — Sphere would hardly make sense anywhere in America but Las Vegas, where it makes a good deal of sense indeed. Its location has also made possible such irresistible headlines as “Sphere and Loathing in Las Vegas,” below which the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel gets into the details of this “architectural embodiment of ridiculousness,” including its surprising origin: “According to James Dolan, the entertainment mogul who financed the Sphere, the inspiration for the building came from ‘The Veldt,’ a 1950 short story by Ray Bradbury” involving a family house with giant screens for walls that can render whatever the children imagine.
Naturally, the kids get hooked, and when Mom and Dad try to intervene, the screens send forth a pack of lions to eat them. “Though the Sphere’s marketing pitch doesn’t explicitly mention being mauled by big digital cats,” Warzel writes, “I got the notion that at least part of the allure of coming to the Sphere is a desire to be overwhelmed.” How, exactly, the venue marshals its advanced technology to do that overwhelming is explained in the MegaBuilds video at the top of the post. With its form not quite like any event space built in human history, it necessitated the invention of everything from a custom camera system to audio-permeable screen surfaces, none of which came cheap.
Hence the cost of seeing a show at Sphere, whether it be the Darren Aronofsky’s “docu-film” Postcard from Earth, U2’s Achtung Baby-based residency earlier this year, or the now-showing Dead & Company, which revives not just the Grateful Dead in their various incarnations over the decades, but also the storied venues in which they played. Its viewers could hardly fail to be astonished by the sheer spectacle, even if they know nothing of the Dead’s colorful history. All of them will no doubt be moved to consider history itself: that of humanity, technology, and civilization, all of which has led up to this rare thing Warzel calls “a brand-new, non-pharmaceutical sensory experience.” Say what you will about the overstimulation and excess represented by Sphere; if you can blow a Deadhead’s mind, you’re definitely on to something.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.