TWITCH / ELSEWHERE SOUND SPACE (2021)

Elsewhere is a beloved Brooklyn music institution and the heart of a sprawling and inclusive community of emerging music fans. As of April 2020, the COVID crisis had effectively shut down live music performance in NYC, and while many organizations have turned to streaming to try to deliver facsimiles of the experience of seeing music live, our partnership with Elsewhere focused on imagining an entirely new medium in which to experience live music in the most interactive, internet-first way possible.

Nowhere does this approach make more sense than Twitch. With their support we dreamed up Elsewhere Sound Space , a comedy sci-fi space spa cult music show with an improvised, nonlinear format driven by bidirectional communication between the talent, the software, and the audience.

To make it happen, we designed and built a hybrid uber-application and COVID-safe studio in the quiet halls, lobbies, and coat check of Elsewhere itself.

The production process for every episode involves a blank sheet of paper and an attempt to break down conventions and subvert expectations while winking at tropes from traditional storytelling.

The fourth wall is transparent on Twitch and our dynamic, software-enabled visual storytelling allows us to interrogate the show-viewer relationship in new ways every time we build a scene.

When designing the systems and software for the program, we approached every touchpoint as a distinct user experience design task. On-site our users include the host, the guest, the technical director (us), the call-in producer, and the sound tech. Online our users are the viewers watching live on Twitch.

Every user’s needs, sensory bandwidth, and interaction capability profiles differ based on their role in shaping the experience, and thus every user’s interface to the show is entirely custom and evolves rapidly with the changing capabilities and needs of the show.

The program offers viewers the ability to influence the course of the plot through two flavors of voting, by purchasing attention from the host via the channel points system, by using keywords in the chat, and by contributing bits (cheering) to progress towards comedic moments onscreen.

For a more in-depth discussion of interaction design for the show, check out our blog post on the topic:

Mass Interaction Design: One to Many to One

In the host’s space, a teleprompter-like heads-up interface gives realtime information about users’ interactions, messages in the chat, new subscribers, prompts from backstage, and bit contributions, while displaying run of show information and a view into the guests’ space.

In their studio, the guest is flanked by four screens displaying the chat, the live program feed, a mirrored view of the guest themself knocked out of their chromakey background, and messages from the technical director.

Among the growing list of features of the core application that drives the show are:

a full-featured scene-building production video switcher

realtime green screen and face-tracking

interactive special effects

use of the Twitch API, PubSub, and ICQ chat architectures to enable dozens of forms of fan interaction

an omniscient and eerily timely ticker

dynamic and interactive titles, graphics, and credits

3D ‘virtual production’-style sets and cartoonish 2D compositions featuring incredible artwork by Dark Igloo

squishy, tactile interactive spaces

dynamic physical control surfaces for host and technical director

on-set system-controlled practical (physical) gags like a receipt printer and motorized candy machine

live video callers composited into 3D scenes

chat-bots

live control of music playback and sound effects

etc. etc.

Elsewhere Sound Space aired monthly on Twitch in early 2021 to live audiences of over 10,000 and has been covered in:

Harper’s Baazar

Billboard

Time Out

Derivative

Brooklyn Magazine

BK Reader

The Hype Magazine

Musical guests included Princess Nokia, Starchild and the New Romantic, Paperboy Love Prince.

Elsewhere Sound Space

Created by: Elsewhere Studios x Hard Work Party

Technical Direction,

Show Software,

Realtime Visuals:

Noah Norman / Hard Work Party

Art Direction: Dark Igloo

Creative Direction: Jake Rosenthal (Elsewhere) & Noah Norman

Produced by: Jake Rosenthal (Elsewhere)

Creative Writing:

Ashok “Dap” Kondabolu, Dark Igloo, Peter Smith, Noah Norman

Studio Direction: Chris Madden

Sound Design: Chris Madden

Live Editing: Noah Norman / Hard Work Party

Live Sound Engineer: Alex Slohm

Production Manager: Alex Pacheco

Media Strategy: David Garber

Prop Styling and Production Assistance: Turiya Madireddi

Music Licensing: Rachel Byrd

Talent Booking: Rami Haykal (Elsewhere)

Production Consult: Chris Willmore

Still Photography: Luis Nieto-Dickens

Twitch Glue Code : Charles Reina

Special Thanks:

Will Adams, Jesse Ozeri

Elburz Sorhkabi, Charles Reina

Dandi Does It,

Lauren Brady, Samuel Bader

Landon Thomas,

elekktronaut, paketa12

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