Lost Horizon is a real festival in a virtual world. The team behind Glastonbury’s Shangri-La presents a multi-stage event that can be explored in more than one way. Lost Horizon is opening its online doors via PC and virtual reality (VR) for a fully interactive experience. No VR gear? No worries. Music lovers can also join via its mobile app or tune into the live-stream via Beatport or Twitch on July 3 – 4.
A concept from Shangri La’s, an outdoor art gallery aimed at inspiring and educating, it’s no surprise the virtual festival pushes creative boundaries. The team behind Lost Horizon wanted to do something more, something different. “We were not up for a simple streaming session so we really started looking into our options,” says Robin Collings, the founder of Shangri La. “That’s when we met the guys at VRJam and Sansar who had been working on this mega platform for years. We had the cultural momentum and creativity, and they had the tech. It really was a meeting of the minds. This was only two months ago which seems mad considering the scale of the project now.” The virtual music festival has come together thanks to a collective effort including support from BBC Radio 1 and Amnesty International.
BBCÂ Robin Collings, founder of Shangri-La
Everyone involved with bringing Lost Horizon to life worked quickly and swiftly. “Kaye Dunnings the Creative Director is a real visionary! She laid out her vision for the space, how people [would] interact with it [and] what it would look like,” says Collings. “None of us has slept a full night since, working in multiple time zones and doing a year’s worth of work in seven weeks.” If you build it, they will come.
What we look like, and where we live are not our defining attributes! This whole VR thing can be a metaphor for that. It’s truly global, and the things that might seem to divide us are largely irrelevant in here. We should embrace that in the real world.
Learning from the VR world to create a better “irl” place, Robin Collings
One of the ways the team at Lost Horizon is giving audiences a new take on music is through their “Party in a Box” (PIAB) VR feature. With Sansar’s interactive PIAB console, performers can deliver stadium-sized live production within their own virtual venues at anytime and from anywhere. Lights, lasers, walls of fire, even zero gravity the whole nine years. They’re all triggered in real-time from a virtual toolkit the artist teams control.
We are all about experimental creativity. I, personally, am really keen to see how the audience interacts with the whole project. How people in VR will be on a dance floor for example. Will they be leaping around hands in the air shouting for a reload, or will they [be] more reserved? Will they interact with people and make new friends? Find love? Have crazy experiences that shape them like we all do at f