Sphere, the giant immersive institution that made headlines in September 2023 when it opened in Las Vegas with concerts by U2 and video work by the artists Es Devlin, Marco Brambilla, John Gerrard and Refik Anadol, both inside and out, is to open its second iteration in Abu Dhabi, capital city of the United Arab Emirates, in collaboration with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi).
“The vision for Sphere has always included a global network of venues,” James L. Dolan, executive chairman and chief executive officer, Sphere Entertainment, said after announcing the news. “Sphere is redefining live entertainment and extending the reach of its transformative impact. We are proud to collaborate with DCT Abu Dhabi to develop Sphere in their city.”
Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of DCT Abu Dhabi, added: “We are excited to bring Sphere to Abu Dhabi in partnership with Sphere Entertainment, providing our residents and visitors with an extraordinary new form of entertainment. Sphere Abu Dhabi will seamlessly integrate advanced technology with captivating storytelling, creating unforgettable memories for everyone who visits.”
The original Sphere, a vast $2.3bn, 365ft tall, 20,000-capacity domed performance venue in Nevada’s desert gambling mecca, is one of the landmark examples of a global phenomenon, identified by The Art Newspaper in February 2024 as “immersive institutions”, which promises to transform the art world and its business model and which is generating a new type of urban architecture. Brambilla explained to The Art Newspaper the challenge and opportunity presented by the sheer scale of Sphere, for which he last year created King Size, an immersive video narrative of the rise of Las Vegas and the death of Elvis Presley.
“The first surprise,” he said, was how the canvas at Sphere—a mesh of tens of thousands of LEDs—“absolutely absorbs imagery in a way I have never seen before.” He saw he had to make his footage much denser than he had for the Outernet immersive institution in London and other venues, and used artificial intelligence (AI) on samples from previous video collages. “AI helped populate the canvas with much, much more imagery,” he said. “It would have taken months and a team of editors [to achieve the same effect].”
“Have you been to the Sphere?” Vice-President Kamala Harris said on the Howard Stern Show on 9 October, speaking to the scale and intensity of the experience while telling her host about attending a U2 concert at the venue. “Everyone should go in with a clear head …” Harris said. “You mean don’t be high,” Stern interjected. “Correct,” Harris said, “because it’s a lot, there’s a lot of visual stimulation.”
The team behind Sphere, including Madison Square Garden Entertainment, have found their international ambitions frustrated in the past year. In November 2023, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, refused permission for a new MSG Sphere, on the scale of the Vegas dome, to be built on the edge of the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. A spokesperson for Sphere Entertainment criticised the decision, telling the architectural periodical AJ: “While we are disappointed in London’s decision, there are many forward-thinking cities that are eager to bring this technology to their communities. We will concentrate on those.”
Another leading player in the immersive institution field, teamLab—a Japanese collective of artists, programmers and more which opened a new teamLab Borderless, in Tokyo’s Azabudai Hills complex in February this year and is expanding internationally into cities such has Hamburg, in Germany—has a 17,000 sq. m site of its own, teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi, nearing completion in the city’s Saadiyat cultural district.
