April 17, 2007 by jenks

The Do LaB Lucent Misting Oasis @ Coachella

it’s 24 days till LIB and we just surpassed the LIB06 presale ticket sales.

now it’s time to buckle in and level up to the next project on the game-plan: Coachella.

since 2005 the Do LaB has been bringing domes to coachella. the first year the Do LaB dome was essentially a spot for festival-goers to be able to escape from the sun for a bit. it had a (renegade) sound-system where we set up some our djs to play, and a misting machine which allowed people to cool off from the heat. in 2006 we returned with the full Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque performing a show developed specifically for coachella called the Forbidden Om, and the Misting Oasis evolved from simply a reprieve to a dynamic performance area with stilters, aerialists, and acrobats thrilling the gathering crowds with four shows a day.

by this year coachella realized that the domes, which could only hold approximately 200 people at capacity were not a very cost-effective option for a festival which attracts 150,000 attendees per day. so for 2007 we are developing an acre-big installation that involves giant flowers blooming from the polo field floor with the drooping petals designed as shade structures.

and in the center, a performance and sound stage which can support a 360 degree, panoramic audience view.

the scope of exposure has also increased, with the festival itself expanding from just a weekend to three days. and with just two weeks and a three-hour drive between coachella and Lightning in a Bottle, this prime promotional opportunity has not gone unnoticed.the do lab has a number of ways planned for engaging the event’s primed music festival-attending audience, from the traiditional, to some that apply new technologies into the design of our experience.

after all, even the way you discover something shapes your experience of it–brand, product, or music festival.

April 4, 2007 by jenks

Lightning in a Bottle 2007

It’s the beginning of April, and The Do LaB has been in production on our Spring festival, Lighting in a Bottle for over two months now. I realized about a month ago how huge an oversight it was that I hadn’t written a single word about LIB here, and this is the first moment that I’ve been able to steal 15 minutes away to give this amazing, overwhelming, inspiring project a little mention.

So what’s the big deal about Lightning in a Bottle? Well, in addition to the 40+ musical acts on 3 stages spanning 40 acres of Santa Barbara forest ground, the whole to do is being powered almost entirely by solar, or otherwise renewable energy, and incorporating green production practices from top to bottom.

Having worked with major music festivals like Coachella and Vegoose through the Do LaB for years, we witnessed the massive amounts of waste these events generate. There’s something about crunching over an entire polo field of plastic water bottles at 12:30 am on Coachella Saturday and realizing that after the bulldozers come in to shove it all off to a landfill, the whole thing would repeat the next night, that really fills you with a bottomless dread for the future of the world.

So when it came time for the Do LaB to create our own festival, we knew we had to do it differently. With LIB we are setting out to not only produce an unforgettable experience, but to create a model for sustainable large-scale live entertainment.

My role on this team is directing the full LIB marketing campaign, which incorporates everything from structuring the communications strategy with our community, to sponsorship and press, and back to all manner of word-of-mouth building initiatives–for an organization that built its reputation in the underground, word of mouth is still what drives our events–and stirring all the ingredients together in the magic marketing cauldron to produce a strategy that optimizes each of its various components.

That’s where my head is at these days in an all-consuming kind of way. I am loving the team we’ve got at the Do LaB, I am loving the process and our creation. And I’m loving the work. Which is a very good thing, since there is a ton of it!

OK. Time’s up…. Back to work.

December 10, 2006 by jenks

DO’in it

based in downtown l.a., The Do LaB is an “open source” artists collective of event producers, lighting designers, choreographers, performers, djs, constructors, welders, costumers, jewelry makers, dancers, airbrush artists, musicians, installation artists, glassblowers, photographers, and anything else you can imagine, all dedicated to creating interactive environments where experience itself is the artform.

in addition to producing our own events and creations, we also work on events for traditional clients such as lexus, scion, redbull, the coachella music festival, e! entertainment, aids project los angeles, and many others.

after almost two years of involement with the do lab–first as the production manager for the collective’s performance troupe, Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, and later as the sponsorship coordinator for our 3-day, green energy-powered, summer music festival, Lightning in a Bottle–i became the do lab’s director of marketing and communications this past october.

this responsibility is not only a huge committment in my life right now, but is also one from which i draw incredible personal satisfaction and pride. it is an honor to get to create and collaborate with this incredible bunch of folks in such a dynamic, innovative atmosphere. it is also extremely exciting to be a part of a company so prescient both in the experiential nature of its “product,” and in the democratic structure of its organization.

the do lab is a fascinating example of future trends in marketing and business, in action now.

there will absolutely be a lot more to say on these and other subjects involving our circus of a startup company in the future, but for now i’ll just offer a few highlights from our portfolio….

(click the links of the creation headings to find out more about the events).

The Flower: