5 ms·

An Amish town that builds live sets for music acts

43 points by camtarn 9y ago

323454 9y ago
Great article, but it's depressing to learn that acts are optimising their performances for a single "instagram moment" that will maximise publicity, potentially at the expense of the actual live experience.
- GuiA 9y ago
  See also: https://www.wired.com/story/selfie-factories-instagram-museum/ https://www.wired.com/story/selfie-factories-instagram-museu...
- donarb 9y ago
  Why depressing? Remember when bands prohibited recording devices from their concerts? They are now finally realizing that fans with cameras (video and still) can do more for publicity than a bloated advertising budget, something which newer bands don't have access to.
j_m_b 9y ago
Lititz is by no means 'an amish town'. It was founded by Moravians. Its more suburban than rural. Interesting note: The owner of Tait Towers owns a home that looks like a castle on top of a hill.
- hammeiam 9y ago
  That's the guy who owns that castle out by Millport Road? I've always wondered about that place.
  - j_m_b 9y ago
    It overlooks Millport Rd off of Woods Dr, but yes, that is Tait's towers =).
- snarf21 9y ago
  Yeah, there are some Amish in the area but it isn't an Amish town in any way. The whole Rock Lititz thing they built is pretty awesome. It also brings lots of huge name acts to the whole Lancaster area. Especially Katy Perry, but if you want to see her you have to go to Olive Garden, seriously!
downrightmike 9y ago
So wired block images if you use an adblocker?
- Zhenya 9y ago
  Seems like images don't load if you block wired's own javascripts.
- Momquist 9y ago
  Lazy loading via javascript at work... If your adblocker has an option to use the <noscript> element, the images display fine on wired though.
slouch 9y ago
Hello from Water Street, Lititz. It is pretty cool to live here.
- yial 9y ago
  I always planned to live in Lititz, but I've only made it to neffsville so far as permanent residence wise. Sadly it's not walking distance to the bulls head.
verAmish_Indeed 9y ago
Name dropping the Amish for a click-bait title. How droll.
karambahh 9y ago
I am a happy CTO of a SaaS AI company but ever since I graduated a double Msc in computer science and EE, I miss playing with PLCs. It seems to me that the worlds of industrial computing/EE and software are finally merging. Being involved in Navigator design & dev must be an amazing job. Anyone has more technical info about it? I guess it's probably a bunch of QNX hosts sharing data on Modbus and from there bridges to the light show & al to synchronize everything? Their careers section mentions Siemens gear but not much more...
- thomasfedb 9y ago
  Would also love to know more about this tech. I dabbled in show control (MSC) when I was a lighting tech with my high school theatre company. Loved it, but it barely worked... Running MIDI over WiFi between two computers running QLab is not a good idea!
  - lostgame 9y ago
    To get around this, I used to create ad-hoc WIFI networks with my iPad running Lemur and my MacBook Pro running Ableton. The local network, always hosted on the Mac, was absolutely reliable enough to do live-streamed, videotaped combo theatre/musical performances with. I literally counted on it. I still had an MPD32 by my MacBook in case it messed up, but over a series of 7 performances it never did. Many of these are even on video. Call it luck, though. I considered myself crazy for doing it to the point where we actually wrote the use of the iPad into the script, it affected our whole team that much. I was a lot more of a naïve girl back then with regards to the reliability of these things. Or possibly, back then, shit was just more reliable (here’s looking at you, Sierra/High Sierra/iOS 11).

43 points by camtarn 9y ago

Great article, but it's depressing to learn that acts are optimising their performances for a single "instagram moment" that will maximise publicity, potentially at the expense of the actual live experience.

GuiA 9y ago
See also: https://www.wired.com/story/selfie-factories-instagram-museum/ https://www.wired.com/story/selfie-factories-instagram-museu...
donarb 9y ago
Why depressing? Remember when bands prohibited recording devices from their concerts? They are now finally realizing that fans with cameras (video and still) can do more for publicity than a bloated advertising budget, something which newer bands don't have access to.

j_m_b 9y ago

Lititz is by no means 'an amish town'. It was founded by Moravians. Its more suburban than rural. Interesting note: The owner of Tait Towers owns a home that looks like a castle on top of a hill.

hammeiam 9y ago
That's the guy who owns that castle out by Millport Road? I've always wondered about that place.
- j_m_b 9y ago
  It overlooks Millport Rd off of Woods Dr, but yes, that is Tait's towers =).
snarf21 9y ago
Yeah, there are some Amish in the area but it isn't an Amish town in any way. The whole Rock Lititz thing they built is pretty awesome. It also brings lots of huge name acts to the whole Lancaster area. Especially Katy Perry, but if you want to see her you have to go to Olive Garden, seriously!

downrightmike 9y ago

So wired block images if you use an adblocker?

Zhenya 9y ago
Seems like images don't load if you block wired's own javascripts.
Momquist 9y ago
Lazy loading via javascript at work... If your adblocker has an option to use the <noscript> element, the images display fine on wired though.

slouch 9y ago

Hello from Water Street, Lititz. It is pretty cool to live here.

yial 9y ago
I always planned to live in Lititz, but I've only made it to neffsville so far as permanent residence wise. Sadly it's not walking distance to the bulls head.

verAmish_Indeed 9y ago

Name dropping the Amish for a click-bait title. How droll.

karambahh 9y ago

I am a happy CTO of a SaaS AI company but ever since I graduated a double Msc in computer science and EE, I miss playing with PLCs. It seems to me that the worlds of industrial computing/EE and software are finally merging. Being involved in Navigator design & dev must be an amazing job. Anyone has more technical info about it? I guess it's probably a bunch of QNX hosts sharing data on Modbus and from there bridges to the light show & al to synchronize everything? Their careers section mentions Siemens gear but not much more...

thomasfedb 9y ago
Would also love to know more about this tech. I dabbled in show control (MSC) when I was a lighting tech with my high school theatre company. Loved it, but it barely worked... Running MIDI over WiFi between two computers running QLab is not a good idea!
- lostgame 9y ago
  To get around this, I used to create ad-hoc WIFI networks with my iPad running Lemur and my MacBook Pro running Ableton. The local network, always hosted on the Mac, was absolutely reliable enough to do live-streamed, videotaped combo theatre/musical performances with. I literally counted on it. I still had an MPD32 by my MacBook in case it messed up, but over a series of 7 performances it never did. Many of these are even on video. Call it luck, though. I considered myself crazy for doing it to the point where we actually wrote the use of the iPad into the script, it affected our whole team that much. I was a lot more of a naïve girl back then with regards to the reliability of these things. Or possibly, back then, shit was just more reliable (here’s looking at you, Sierra/High Sierra/iOS 11).