ind round
In Living Color InD Round: The Future of the Concert Experience by
jennifer costo
Y
ou’re watching Bob McCafferty from Beru Revue strut across the stage at World Cafe Live. The crowd of about 400 are all bobbing their heads and singing along. You have the best view in the house. It’s electric and it’s mesmerizing. And then you take off your headset, and you’re suddenly back on your couch. You were never at World Cafe at all, but it sure seemed like you were. Virtual reality has become increasingly popular, and Ed Kiggins and Todd Gerber are bringing it to the Philly music scene. Kiggins and Gerber founded their company InD Round about a year and a half ago, and are hoping to create an immersive 38
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concert experience, and they’re getting local artists involved in the project, too. By setting up cameras and recording live shows, InD Round allows viewers to feel like they’re at the concert from the comfort of home. Kiggins and Gerber say the platform was designed for those who want to see a show but aren’t able to go, or those who want to watch it over and over. All angles are filmed, so the viewer can watch the stage, but also what’s happening next to them and behind them—just like they’re there. Eventually, the app will become an all-inclusive concert experience; each performance in the app will have its own page with merch sales and tour dates, a setlist,
and a non-VR video and audio. Kiggins and Gerber, graphic designers who also worked in video production, found they were good at virtual reality after working on a project for a client. One day, Gerber suggested they film concerts in virtual reality and almost immediately they got excited about it. “I remember we sat in a dead silence for a few seconds after he said that and then we just said, ‘That’s pretty freaking cool,’ and we went with it,” Kiggins says. The company is small; Kiggins and Gerber work near Kiggins‘ home in Avondale, Pennsylvania, and they have a crew of six others who work remotely. Artists also get 30 percent of the profits from sales—something Kiggins said he was inspired to do after reading how little bands make from Spotify streams. The two got hooked up with McCafferty after Kiggins, a fan of Beru Revue, reached out to him to ask if they’d be interested in working together on the beta version. After a few meetings, they hit it off and recorded the band playing at World Cafe Live. McCafferty was floored seeing the project come to fruition. “It was just this crazy thing,” he says of watching himself perform. “You just lose yourself. It’s far out. I’m tickled pink.” Kiggins and Gerber want to eventually launch a smart TV app, and are already expanding beyond just rock music into other areas of performance art, working with classical music performance halls, poetry/ spoken word venues, lecture halls and comedy clubs. They also want to expand beyond venues in the Philadelphia area. “It’s about putting a live performance into your hands,” Kiggins says. “It’s about not waiting for the cosmos to align, to see if you have a babysitter or see if you can get off work the next day. This is really an immersive thing. It’s hypnotic.” “Version 3.0 is getting the... [sense of ] smell,” Gerber adds jokingly. “We haven’t gotten there yet.” P HOTO G RAP H BY B EN WONG