Ars Electronica SPAXELS® Flying at Rock in Rio

Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are among the superstars who’ve been booked for Rock in Rio 2017, one of the world’s largest annual rock music events. And this year, in addition to the class acts on stage, the entertainment lineup also includes a Rock in Rio premiere: a drone show in a class of its own! Every evening of the event’s run, the Ars Electronica SPAXELS® will take to the sky above Rio de Janeiro’s Barra Olympic Park to get the audience fired up for the headliner. The Linz-based swarm of LED-studded quadcopters will be conjuring up spectacular light sculptures in the festival’s airspace—a majestic 200-meter-long sine wave, a gigantic electric guitar and as the grand finale, of course, the Rock in Rio logo.

Video Teaser Production near Neulichtenberg

At the end of March, the Spaxels swarm and a 60-piece orchestra of the Anton Bruckner Private University were the featured performers in a video teaser and reportage shot for broadcast on Brazilian TV. “Pretty damned thrilling! The Spaxels are undoubtedly the way of the future as far as visualizations are concerned,” was the obviously delighted reaction to the drone swarm’s aerial artistry by Rock in Rio Production Manager Nuno Sousa Pinto, who arrived in Linz with his film crew.