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🎢 Nine Months In: What Guest Agency Actually Means + Tame Impala

seancawelti
1 day ago
2 min read
Tame Impala concert lighting and LED stage design in Minneapolis

A few weeks ago my friend Michael got me a ticket to see Tame Impala in Minneapolis (thank you, Michael). Now, putting aside the fact that I'm a big Tame Impala fan, I can honestly say the show was a masterclass in production design: lighting, lasers, confetti cannons, multiple LED screens on tracking systems that moved the stage's edge further into the crowd with every song. Dang.


At several points the whole room went so bright that the line between stage and audience basically disappeared. I felt drawn into the music, like I was part of the story of that evening instead of just watching it from the outside. Enjoy a few videos:



It was genuinely one of the most immersive things I've experienced all year. And it's also, I think, not actually where the future of experience design is headed, even though it looks like it from the outside.


Here's the distinction I keep coming back to: immersion is about how much a space or a show surrounds you. Agency is about whether anything you do changes what happens.


Tame Impala's show gave me the first in overwhelming, gorgeous quantities. It gave me none of the second, and it didn't need to. A concert is a story that's already been written, and my job as an audience member is to feel it, not steer it. That's exactly as it should be.


But that distinction is the whole game in my world. Nine months into leading Immersive Experiences & Play (IXP) at Universal Creative, working alongside the ATI team and our incredible studio partners, it's the question underneath every project: what makes someone feel like they're inside a story instead of just watching one? What turns an experience into something you actually remember instead of just something you saw?


I've been thinking about that a lot this week after reading a piece in blooloop on where theme park storytelling is headed. (No really, read the article, it's great.)


The throughline is one I believe in completely:


People don't just want to watch a story anymore, they want to matter within it.


They want a choice that changes what happens next, and a role to play instead of just a seat to sit in. That's the line between a passive guest and a participant who's been given real agency, and it's the thing my team and I think about every single day, on every project.


Nine months in, that's the work. Not just building beautiful, immersive worlds (though we do plenty of that, and I'll never get tired of it) but building in the moments where a guest's choice actually matters. Lights and lasers and screens can make you feel like you're inside the story.


Guest agency is what happens when you are actually inside the story, determining what happens next.


It's harder than it sounds, and it's the most fun kind of hard I know.


More soon.

 
 
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