Childish Gambino x
Brighter in the Dark
Multi-sensory sight and sound temples designed by Childish Gambino to bring his art and unreleased music to life.
The installation - named “Brighter in the Dark” - was created in partnership with Google Pixel & Coachella headliner Childish Gambino. The installation opened to the public on the Coachella Festival-grounds as part of the famed Coachella Arts Program. The installation yielded over 101M press impressions in its first weekend of Coachella alone and almost 70% increase in Google’s social engagement from previous years.
As an event - Coachella offers a lot of distractions, but few opportunities to truly connect with a major artist - outside of the stage experience. Childish Gambino wanted to change this reality for his fans and festival-goers. As he explained when speaking of his choice to partner with Google: "Technology, when used correctly, is a perfect companion for art. It can elevate experiences and give a huge reach to things that would otherwise be very localized and limited."
This ethos is the basis of Childish Gambino’s "Brighter in the Dark" experience: two multi-sensory sight and sound temples designed by Childish Gambino to bring his art and unreleased music to life. More specifically - the temples were dedicated to our primary senses of contact (vision and hearing) to give audiences a chance to step away from the madness and find a moment of deeper connection within Gambino’s universe.
These immersive experiences also included a sneak preview of multiplayer AR app “Pharos” on the Google Pixel 3. Built with Unity and ARCore technology, Pharos AR has users walk through an AR portal into a cosmic cave filled with paintings. The paintings begin dancing to the song “Algorythm,” while Childish Gambino appears as a hologram, interacting with users through lyrics and symbols depicted on the cave’s walls. These visuals mimic the design of Gambino’s live show and stage - also inspiring the aesthetic of the design / materiality of the physical temple structures.
Role: Lead Producer / Head of Artist Partnership