The Day For Night Festival is one of the premier Art and Music events in the United States – where every year the pinnacle of talent showcase their latest creations for 20,000 eager Houstonians who descend into an abandoned Mail sorting facility to have their minds blown. VT Pro Design, having successfully debuted their epic creation Bardo in 2016, predictably were asked to return in 2017 to exhilarate audiences once again. This time around, VT Pro’s creative director Michael Fullman reached out to his favorite Mr. Munkowitz to collaborate on an entirely new concept – a spectacle of immersive theater at a scale that would inspire and propel beyond anything they’ve done before.
At its foundation, the installation was an exploration of the absence and presence of light and how it defines a space. The team wanted to play with dramatic scale, and to do so they employed two Kuka 210’s as Robotic Conductors, wielding large, fabricated geometric shades to manipulate the various light sources and cast brilliant arrays of graphic shadow work throughout the space.
Conceptually, they wanted to recreate one of the ancient world’s most sought-after immersive experiences, invoking a ritual that harnessed the spiritual forces of nature to create a transformative experience. This ritual was housed in a darkened chamber called the Telestron (an adaptation of the original Telesterion), deployed cutting-edge robotic and light projection technology to bring the audience into an experience of the diurnal cycle (sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight). In other words – a complete Day for Night.