Masters of illusion

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The Lights in the Sky tour allows Trent Reznor to turn the stage into his own creative playground. (photo courtesy of Rob Sheridan)

Never shy of making headlines, Trent Reznor the front man and mastermind behind industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails (NIN), has again drawn the attention of the media, but this time its deservedly for his creative talent rather than his notorious tongue. Kelly Lewis reports.

Reznor may well be a controversial and outspoken critic of the music industry, but as the band’s only official member, which is now free from its contractual obligations with former record label Interscope Records, Reznor has flaunted his artistic freedom to create a touring show where multimedia and music coexist, the Lights in the Sky tour.

The 2008 tour makes it way throughout North and South America and brings together some of the most technically sophisticated equipment ever integrated on the stage of a touring show, which introduces a new frontier for live touring bands.

The show involves high–end lighting and video technology that enables NIN to creatively interact with live stage equipment and trigger an array of spectacular visual effects.

In addition to the creative free reign paraded by the Lights in the Sky tour, it showcases NIN as the first band to pioneer with this “ground breaking” technology and raises the bar for the live events industry at large.

The complex and multifaceted show requires a host of industry professionals working collectively to bring the numerous technical elements together as one cohesive artistic work – no small feat.

With this in mind, the show’s essential ingredients were painstakingly planned and created over a three-month-plus period, which primarily involved Reznor, NIN art director Rob Sheridan, NIN lighting designer Roy Bennett and Dominic Audet and Sakchin Bessette from Montreal based new media arts and entertainment studio, Moment Factory, who created the show’s content and interactive components.

Specialising in the production of immersive digital environments; Moment Factory has worked with some of the biggest entertainers, including Cirque du Soleil.

For the Lights in the Sky tour Audet and Bessette, introduced to the outfit by Bennett, became involved in designing the interactive set-up that allows NIN to self generate the show’s visuals, which are displayed on three large LED screens making each and every show visually unique.

Due to the show’s originality and technical advancement, in that it has the capacity to track process and generate content all triggered in real-time, it has made leaps and bounds for live bands and realises Reznor’s artistic vision.

As previous NIN tours had played with the idea of interactive visuals, it was a natural progression for this tour to be the next step in developing a fully live and interactive environment, which sees on-stage equipment integrated into the performance as live visual instruments that the band plays with.

Sheridan has been working with Reznor on NIN’s artistic creations since 1999 and for him this tour was about juxtaposing the show’s interactive multimedia components with the musical elements to create a new theatrical environment.

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