With Phish‘s four-night Sphere run just a couple weeks away, the band’s lighting director (and unofficial fifth member), Chris Kuroda, is casting his creative vision upon another canvas in Sin City, helping to program an enormous LED display on the outside of the Rio Hotel & Casino.
Kuroda, a.k.a. CK5, and his associate LD Andrew Giffin were tapped by Marty Millman, vice president of construction and development services at Dreamscape Companies, who recently became the new owner-operators of the Rio. Millman has been a fan of Phish for over 30 years, and after deciding to replace the Rio’s old red-and-blue neon with a more modern light display from ClearLED, he was inspired by the linear arrangement of Kuroda’s recent light rig, which was similar to what he had in mind for the Rio, so he reached out to Kurodo himself.
Related: Chris Kuroda & Andrew Giffin: Mobilizing The Phish Lighting Operation [Interview]
“What we want is to put on a show,” Millman said. “We want authenticity. We want subtlety, to some degree. And we knew that he could program the lights from an artistic perspective, where it’s a gift to Las Vegas. … We knew we’d have some great new LED screens where we can tell everybody how great the Rio is and what our new offerings are. But we wanted the facade to be noticed.”
Kuroda, Millman, and Giffin spent a week camped out in one of the Rio’s Palazzo suites from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. nightly, programming a variety of looks pixel by pixel.
“I think there’s about 60 looks. We’ve got 10-minute looks that are slow and evolving, and then every 10 minutes there’s something a little bit more exciting that happens fast and speeds up,” Millman said. “They also designed programming to randomize how that’s all selected, so no two nights are going to be the same.”
Watch a local news segment on the Rio Hotel & Casino’s new facelift courtesy of Phish lighting directors Chris Kuroda and Andrew Griffin below. Testing of the new light display is ongoing and the final product should be on display soon.
Local News Report On New Las Vegas Skyline Lighting Displays
[h/t JamBase]
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