Absolut Labs is looking for weird, unexpected ways to influence the nightlife experience. We’re here to make nightlife better by fusing music, art and technology in new and unique ways.

For the Sónar+D Innovation Challenge, Absolut Labs challenges creators to explore the way we experience electronic music festivals – from the audience to the stage – using a fusion of music, art and technology to promote new types of social and musical connections.

Main aspects to be explored

Connectivity and social interaction between festival attendees
Reinforcing the collective spirit of live electronic music with non-invasive, transparent technology
Offering performers new ways of interacting and connecting with the audience
About Absolut Labs

Absolut Labs is an innovation incubator and growth engine for the future of the brand experiences, content and technology are the fuel for that growth. So what this research is giving us is an immersive understanding of the landscape, and a roadmap to start looking at all of the areas where Absolut as a brand can invest. Whether they’re small startups, or our Nightlife 100 influencer community, or the general public, it’s an opportunity for us to connect with the maker community; to listen to what’s out there, and for us to ask, ‘How do you think we can make nightlife better.

By extrapolating from current trends, we can make some good guesses about future astonishing shows. Yet, when we think of future of nightlife , too often we restrict our imagination to particular areas: more gadgets for musicians, more lights, more projections, etc. But some of the truly exciting developments will be around festivals and shows that will improve culture and catalyze our creativity.
New technologies offer us opportunities for shaping the public spaces in which people move, behave and interact. It can even can accommodate a wide range of creative uses. The future idea would be that the whole festival’s space would be constantly changing, and everybody would be able to interact with it.
That’s why we are developing a space for the attendees to create a collective sculpture. The users will be able to place different building block pieces, anywhere on the table. The relationship between shapes and the positions will generate a soundscape of its own, as well as light patterns underneath the pieces.