Coachella 2017 is crawling with branded selfies, drink promotions and pop-up shops. It's all mostly predictable stuff, except for an unexpectedly immersive series of hands-on experiences from HP that are easily the festival's non-musical (and in the case of a bandana station, practical) highlights.
First up, you can't miss the Antarctic Dome, the biggest of HP's activations; the white curved canopy sits right next to the entrance to the festival grounds. Step inside—and yes, it's indeed air conditioned in there—and you'll find a planetarium-like theater with 500 comfy bean bag-like chairs circling the floor.
Photograph: Michael Juliano
The ensuing show, a version of which premiered last year at Panorama, is no outdated journey through the stars though. Instead, the 360-degree installation falls somewhere between 2001's "Star Gate" sequence and a techno-sci-fi acid trip, a drug-friendly—judging by the persistent gasps—animation in the mold of classic Pink Floyd laser shows for the Coachella age. What starts as a simple starry sky with Joshua trees in the foreground quickly takes off into the cosmos and warps through fantastical landscapes with all sorts of imagined creatures.
Further inside the festival, HP has a smaller air-conditioned dome to plug its new line of Pavilion laptops. But far from a lame sales pitch, the showroom provides some pretty novel hands-on experiences, and popular ones judging by the persistent line outside. Chalk that up to the free bandana station, where you can digitally design your own and then watch as a large format printer spits out your design on a large sheet of fabric.
Photograph: Michael Juliano
Photograph: Michael Juliano
Photograph: Michael Juliano
Elsewhere inside, you can manipulate the laser patterns that dance across the ceiling or strap on a virtual reality headset and conduct a recreation of the Antarctic Dome show.
Photograph: Michael Juliano
Photograph: Michael Juliano
Our favorite experience, though, was hidden in a dark room in the back of the pavilion. Step inside of a black curtain and underneath an array of digital cameras and you'll meet a light artist who tells you to think of a pose and hold real still. As the cameras snap in succession, he'll wave his arms about in the air to leave a trail of light in the resulting 360-video—which looks completely badass and not at all dorky in the case of this writer's pose that's part Street Fighter, part Doctor Strange.
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