- [Presenter] If you go to a big arena concert,
like Taylor Swift's Eras Tour,
or watch your basketball team score
a buzzer-beating three-pointer in the playoffs,
or attend a K-Pop show,
light up sticks and wristbands
will likely be a part of the experience,
turning the audience into part of the show,
with synchronized light displays at the touch of a button.
So how do these small devices create
these huge immersive visuals?
- It's funny, because oftentimes people think, like,
there's a GPS in each of the devices
or, like, there's a lot of, like, AI advanced technology,
but we really like the old school technology (laughs)
and just be creative with it, you know?
- [Presenter] This is the tech behind LED wristbands.
Montreal-based PixMob is a leading company
in event LED technology.
PixMob won't comment on whether or not
they're involved in the Eras Tour,
but they have done previous Taylor Swift tours,
as well as Coldplay.
- The Weeknd, Bad Bunny,
we do most of the major tours in North America.
We work a lot with NBA, NHL.
- [Presenter] And to do that,
they use two different technologies.
Let's start off with the simplest, RF wristbands,
that receive a radio frequency communicating
the precise timing and colors for each band.
- The two white squares here are the two LEDs,
and here you have the small computer
that controls those LEDs
and then you have that other black thing
that receives radio frequency and gives it to the computer
and then the computer will light up the LEDs based on
the RF commands that it received.
- [Presenter] This is what PixMob used
for Game 5 of the Knicks Heat series.
(crowd chanting)
When fans went to their seats at Madison Square Garden,
they found one of these RF wristbands waiting for them,
each one pre-programmed to be a part of a different group.
So a wristband in this section, for instance,
is programmed to be in Group 1 for one effect,
Group 2 for another.
Up near the entertainment control room,
operator, Averil, serves as the conductor.
When one of the programmed effects is activated,
different groups light up in sync
to create different patterns within the stadium.
Or she can manually play with them based on the moment,
flashing Knicks colors, orange, blue, orange, blue.
- It's really fun to kind of see the crowd get into it
and be excited.
You're having them be part of the show, which is special.
- [Presenter] The signal emits from this really small box.
- We have a very simple transmitter,
it's like the size of a tissue box,
that we can connect to a light board.
We like that technology because you can literally travel
with the whole control system in your suitcase.
- [Presenter] RF technology
is what most other wearable LED companies use too,
like Xylobands,
who do everything from Eurovision to corporate events.
But the more advanced wristbands,
like what you see at the Super Bowl or Lady Gaga,
use infrared technology.
- So the same thing that you use to turn on your TV,
it's kind of like technology that is, like, 50 years old,
it's really old school tech,
but we've managed to twist it in a way
that makes it quite new and magical.
Because we use infrared,
we can send data to specific locations,
so to you or to the person next to you,
and it doesn't have to be the same data,
so that's how we create those specialized effects,
as we call them,
where we can almost turn a crowd into, like, a video canvas.
- [Presenter] These signals come
from robotic transmitters placed all over an arena.
You can see it here at a Coldplay concert last year.
These transmitters were placed on sound towers
and the stage.
Here's what that looked like in PixMob's visualizer,
which is how it designs what the shows will look like
and what the wristbands,
the company calls them Pixels, will do.
- These two lines are basically the center
of each of the transmitters,
so even if we have two transmitters right now
doing the swipe, it still looks like one wave.
By simply adding, you know,
more of these moving heads in a setup like this,
we could do more complex animation.
- [Presenter] When PixMob wants to display a shape,
like, say, these hearts,
it just puts on a mask like this
to shine the infrared signal through it.
- If you're under the infrared beam
and it tells you to go red, then you go red,
and then as the beam moves away from you,
then you go back to whatever color you were,
or black, or whatever like that.
So it's really like the wristbands
are quite stupid in a sense (laughs),
but we like it that way, you know,
and all the kind of smarts of the technology
is really in the transmitters.
- [Presenter] Audience concert lighting really started
in Korea with K-Pop bands back in the '90s,
and they get quite creative now too.
And those light sticks aren't handed out
as part of the event,
they're mementos that fans
will sometimes spend more than $100 on.
They work a bit differently.
You download an app, put in your seating information,
and connect the light via Bluetooth.
It's how they can be very detailed
in their arena-sized designs.
Fans call it an ocean.
(upbeat music)
But whether it's Bluetooth, RF or infrared,
the experience of these wearable pieces of technology
are only getting more detailed
to make every fan feel like part of the show.
(upbeat music)