Update: Transfix closed after a six-week run, at the end of May 2023, due to "low ticket sales, nightly overstaffing and an early decision not to schedule weekly live-music events led to the downfall," according to a July 30, 2023 Las Vegas Review-Journal article.
Lights, glamour, fire! For anyone finding themselves in Las Vegas now through September, Transfix is an extravagant, dynamic, and neon-packed show that seems perfectly fitting for the city that never sleeps. Three years in the making and billed as the world’s largest immersive art experience, Transfix brings together more than 50 luminous, sometimes fiery, installations by artists worldwide on a multilevel, 200,000-square-foot venue sited across 4 acres at Resorts World Las Vegas.
Visitors should expect to spend upwards of two hours wending their way through the dazzling maze of artworks, which includes mind-melting videos, ocular and sonic landscapes, and, of course, fire-breathing sculptures, according to the event organizer. (Did we mention there will be fire?)
Participating in this illuminated extravaganza are several artists who work regularly with light. In Axion, German artist Christopher Bauder and composer KiNK (Strahil Velchev) combine a large-scale inverted pyramid of illuminated latticework with moving lights and sound to evoke the sense of a hallucination.
Mexican entrepreneur and Mayan Warrior project founder Pablo González Vargas is presenting Ilumina, a 37-foot-tall light and sound sculpture that invites participates to meditate for three minutes while connected to biometric sensors that use the gathered data to inform the structure’s lighting and soundscapes.
Multinational technology group LedPulse Collective Mind, known for its LED motion-activated wristbands, is displaying its advanced volumetric LED 3D display, DragonO2. The modular system uses LedPulse’s patented DragonO Neuronal System to create an interactive and dynamic experience.
And, as promised, American sculptural artist Charles Gadeken introduces light of the most primitive sort: fire. Helix is a 25-foot-tall treelike sculpture with outstretched branches culminating in orbs of fire. (Gadeken is also displaying Entwined, a garden of flowerlike sculptures composed of 2,000 LEDs.)
Through Transfix’s six-month run, the show will collaborate with festival- and event-planning organizations to organize additional programming, such as live performances and dance parties spread across the venue’s three music stages. Ten artist-designed bars and speakeasies offer respite and signature cocktails for attendees of age.
“Our aim is to elevate and redefine ‘immersive,’” said Tom Stinchfield, Transfix co-founder and chief revenue officer in a press release. “We believe that interacting with art at this large of a scale can change the world by illuminating one mind at a time.”
In the same release, Transfix CEO and co-founder Michael Blatter said the show’s business model centered on supporting artists: “Our goal is to change the way that artists receive recognition and compensation for their work. We founded Transfix to create a platform that funds artists of all backgrounds to develop new large-scale artworks that would have never been realized otherwise, and we’re thrilled to present it with the world.”
This article appeared in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Architectural SSL.
