Fifty-plus live performances from a star-studded lineup, including Fatboy Slim, Carl Cox, Peggy Gou, Jamie Jones and more. Dunnings said she came up with the idea for Lost Horizon shortly after Glastonbury was cancelled in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Not a million miles from my usual moves, if I’m honest, and I think still preferable to the alternative of just sitting back while you make your avatar perform a series of pre-set dance moves from a drop-down menu. Tickets for Lost Horizon are free, but donations to Amnesty International and the Big Issue are encouraged. The world's defining voice in music and pop culture since 1952. Dunnings agrees that, although you can talk to your mates in Lost Horizon – their lips move and everything – there are just some things a virtual festival can never capture. We can only hope that in the future teams of experts will update this world using a thorough taxonomy of Somerset mud, carefully categorised all the way from easy-walking to the dreaded wellie-sucker. Before I leave, there are a couple of key details I need to fill in. Download, the UK’s biggest rock festival which was due to host 80,000 attendees this coming weekend, has announced details of its own virtual offering to be streamed on YouTube, beginning at 12pm on Friday. The Oculus Rift only registers movements of my hands and head, so I can put in all the dancefloor effort I want and my avatar will stay rooted to one spot, waving his arms. Worthy Farm's a no-go this year thanks to Covid-19. normally has green hair,” she explains. The BBC will be broadcasting classic sets all weekend, as close as you’ll get to the Pyramid stage in 2020, but what of the festival’s notorious late-night south-east corner? Glastonbury’s Shangri-La arena has announced a virtual festival, Lost Horizon. Six months on from the first Lost Horizon festival, the team are working to put on a series of new concerts as it seeks to plug the gap in live music … © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The festival will also feature more than 200 visual art pieces, curated by the ShangrilART group on the theme of human connection. By … Maybe this is the isolation talking, but I don’t go to festivals to see avatars, no matter how cool they look. Last modified on Mon 8 Jun 2020 15.30 EDT. Today we’d be crammed into cars, sleeping bags under our feet to make space for more booze in the boot, setting off on the slow pilgrimage to some corner of a Pilton field that is forever Glastonbury. In another, better timeline, we’d have spent yesterday trying to remember where we left our wellies. It’s also got to be much better for the environment. Kevin EG Perry heads in for a mash-up. I can pick up (and hurl) a bottle, but hard as I try I just can’t seem to drink from it. The team behind Glastonbury Festival‘s famed Shangri-La area have announced Lost Horizon, a new virtual reality festival. That means you’ll need to know not just what room your mates are in, but which of the many versions in this mini-multiverse. The place brings back such a blurred streak of memories that when I turn around I half-expect to see myself animated in the corner, sweating profusely, doing something furtive with a key. Naturally my first instinct is to see whether I can pour myself a cider. “They keep telling us it looks just like the real thing,” he says happily, “which is lucky as none of us have actually been.”. All of that is coming, but for now we just really wanted to do something during lockdown.”, That’s enough for now. I gingerly learn to take my first steps using the joystick which thankfully slims the chances of me tripping over my coffee table. All rights reserved. “You could lock in at 3pm and have 12 hours of a virtual sesh, which is very appealing right now,” she says. “This is probably the most sustainable festival that’s ever existed,” says Dunnings, “in terms of not using up resources.”, “Obviously it’s not like the real thing, although I guess in years to come you’ll be able to order the smells to turn up like a Deliveroo,” adds Tofu, who says we’re only just seeing the start of what virtual festivals could one day offer. “Well, the good thing is everyone’s in the safety of their own home, so they can do whatever they like,” points out production manager Rachel Beltran sagely, although Dunnings offers a word of caution. A virtual reality festival from the team behind Glastonbury’s night-time area, Shangri-La, will aim to unify festival-goers from their own homes during lockdown. “The whole place looks like you’re on another planet, but at a rave. Glastonbury's Shangri-La will be recreated in digital form for a free online festival featuring the likes of Fatboy Slim. On July 3 and 4 they’re inviting us all to attend Lost Horizon, a massive free VR event they’re calling “a real festival, in a virtual world”. A reveller at the real Shangri-La in 2014. “It represents the fact that it’s 30 years since the traveller site appeared at Glastonbury, which has sort of turned into Shangri-La over the years,” she explains, referring to the new age travellers who clashed with Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis in the ’90s over their belief that Glastonbury had strayed too far from its roots as a rebellious party for the people. I pull on the headset to find myself transported to Sansar’s loading bay, which looks a little like a galactic airport concourse. In order to deal with crowding in this virtual world, venues will, once they’re reached a capacity of around 100 avatars, reroute new arrivals to an identical copy. Every time we put on a band we’re the first people in the whole world to put on that type of band in virtual reality.”, “It’s a pretty fucking crazy thing, to be honest” – Lost Horizon’s musical director Chris Tofu. We must make do. When the festival rolls around, this area will host an eclectic line-up stretching from Glastonbury stalwart Beans On Toast to cosmic rockers Henge. It’s bizarre, but I don’t think anyone else is crazy enough to do it. A full house for Carl Cox at the Gas Tower stage More than four million people worldwide tuned in to Lost Horizon, the new virtual festival by the team behind Glastonbury Festival’s Shangri-La, which took place on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 July. “Right in the middle of the whole of Coronavirus we’ve been putting on [British electronic band] Alabama 3, who are always naughty. In Virtual Reality News. “It’s enormous now. The BBC will be broadcasting classic sets all weekend. This year’s planned 50th anniversary event had been due to be held from 24-28 June at its usual home of Worthy Farm in Somerset, with Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar booked as Pyramid Stage headliners. People dance at a stage in the Shangri-La area of Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts site at Worthy Farm, Pilton on July 1, 2013 near Glastonbury, England. Surely you can’t recreate that decadent playground for the senses during life under lockdown? June 8, 2020 – The team behind Glastonbury Festival’s Shangri-La experience, in partnership with Sansar and VR Jam, has today announced Lost Horizon (July 3 & 4): a music and arts festival in virtual reality, featuring a lineup of world-famous DJs, underground acts and visual artists, and raising money for The Big Issue and Amnesty International. Streaming for FREE on Tim McG Photo's FB & Youtube. “Someone had to try it, and I’m glad it’s us.”. Shangri-La — the weirdest, wackiest and, arguably, most wonderful area Glastonbury has to offer — is going virtual. Performers on the second Freedom stage include Frank Turner, Alabama 3 and Coldcut, while films, documentaries, theatre, live art, comedy, animation and talks will be shown in the Shangri-La International Television area (dubbed Shitv). © 2020 NME is a member of the media division of BandLab Technologies. The arena, which would have been returning to Glastonbury this year from the 24th to the 28th June, will now host their festival space virtually, following the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent cancellation of Glastonbury's 50th anniversary festival. Shangri-La launched at Glastonbury in 2008 as a successor to the Lost Vagueness area and has evolved every year. Speaking of which, I’ve now been wearing the headset for 35 minutes and I’m starting to feel like I’ve been reading a paperback on a long car journey. I’m still not sure VR festivals can ever take the place of the sweat, mud and glory of a good old-fashioned meatspace festival, but right now a few hours in a virtual sesh sounds like as good a way to spend a weekend as any other – and if anyone can get it right, it’s Shangri La. Next I meet the fellow avatars of some of the team who’ve spent the last few months scrambling to bring this festival to virtual life. This is our way of getting around Covid and still being able to meet up with people at Shangri-La, which is amazing, even if it’s as a weird little avatar.”, Therein lies the rub. If you've ever lost yourself in the Glastonbury Festival's Shangri-La zone, you'll understand why for many people this year, the festival's cancellation is carrying an extra tinge of sadness. In the festival’s absence, the BBC has announced extensive broadcast plans to celebrate it on the weekend it was due to take place, showing a greatest hits of best performances including broadcasting David Bowie’s 2000 headliner set in full for the first time. Lost Vagueness – a pastiche of the Las Vegas strip – began in 1998 and ran until 2007, after which it evolved into Shangri-La. Worthy Farm will host only the cows this year, after the festival … Glastonbury’s Shangri-La arena has announced a virtual festival, Lost Horizon. Glastonbury’s Shangri-La is set to be recreated in a 3D digital form for the free new two-day virtual reality festival Lost Horizon in July. With archival video, artists at home, throwback performances, unique moments, and a virtual gathering in the comments. “It’s all an experiment,” says Dunnings. I look down at my virtual hands in wonder, because those are the rules of entering a new reality. Green screen. Creatives from Glastonbury’s Shangri-La design new virtual worlds for upcoming gigs | Design Week designweek.co.uk - By Molly Long. “I miss smelling other people’s sweat,” says Dunnings, a sentiment I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with. Shangri-La 2020 Virtual Festival. “Obviously you can’t wear green, and ABSOLUTE. Fill the festival-shaped hole in your life with these live, virtual alternatives – including a VR version of Glastonbury's Shangri-La. A virtual reality festival from the team behind Glastonbury’s night-time area, Shangri-La, will aim to unify festival-goers from their own homes during … We should have been packed by now. They’re working with VR startups Sansar and […] The post Team behind Glastonbury’s Shangri-La launches virtual festival appeared first on Music Ally. The team behind Glastonbury Festival’s famous after-hours mini-city, Shangri-La, has announced virtual-reality (VR) festival Lost Horizon. Four virtual stages. Welcome to Lost Horizon, from the team behind Glastonbury's Shangri-La: the world's largest music and arts festival in virtual reality!. Among the DJs will be tech-house Ibiza favourites Jamie Jones and Seth Troxler, and more bass-leaning selectors like Eats Everything and Skream. ext we visit the Freedom stage, one of Shangri-La’s most recognisable spaces, where I’m struck by an immediate Pavlovian desire to get on it. The attention to detail is staggering, even extending to the liminal spaces between the stages themselves. It doesn’t squelch, though. Creatives from Glastonbury’s Shangri-La design new virtual worlds for upcoming gigs Six months on from the first Lost Horizon festival, the team are working to put on a series of new concerts as it seeks to plug the gap in live music caused by lockdowns. In the future, Snoop Dogg will roll a joint for you. Dunnings says they’d been planning to build the Nomad stage for real, had this year’s festival gone ahead. By creating a digital platform to experience art and music in a new way, we are at the forefront of defining the next generation of live entertainment and creative communities as we know them.”. “Front left in front of the speaker’ just won’t cut it anymore. The real Shangri-La is doesn't exist this year, of course, so its designers have built a virtual one instead. I follow them through a glowing blue portal and then there it is, large as life: the lightbulb-studded sign that announces you’re lost no more, that you’ve found your way to Shangri-La. Front left, in front of the speaker, in whatever timeline I end up in. Chaotic rave zone of cancelled festival will be rendered in 3D online for two-day event in July, Mon 8 Jun 2020 13.49 EDT It will be accessible on PC or via a mobile app, plus a virtual reality option via the Sansar platform, and feature “computer-generated avatars and green screen hologram performances”, according to organisers. Sign up at sansar.com/losthorizon. More than 50 music acts will perform on 3 and 4 July across four virtual stages. Despite Glastonbury Festival 's cancellation this year, organizers behind the event's Shangri-La after-hours area have announced a new virtual event … Celebrating the finest vinos, Shangri-La hotels are holding their first-ever wine festival in Hong Kong. Join me for Shangri-La 2020, a Virtual Festival! “It takes some getting used to and it does give you a bit of motion sickness the first time you do it.”. “Fuckin’ hell – it’s been really complex,” sighs Tofu. Sign up to experience LostHorizonin VR or on PC at www.sansar.com/losthorizon. However, the team behind Shangri-La is hoping to plug the gap with a virtual-reality event called Lost Horizon on 3-4 July. The rows of Portaloos. Prompted by the cancellation of the Somerset event’s 50th anniversary edition, Lost Horizon will feature a … With this years festivities cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak, event organizers today announced that this year’s Shangri-La celebration will be moving to a virtual format in the form of Lost Horizon, a two-day celebration featuring over 200 pieces of art from 60-plus creators and live performances from over 50 musical acts. “He had to dye his hair orange; otherwise he’d have had an egg head.” Although her set has already been recorded, she plans to be back for the festival. “It’s kind of a piss-take of the BBC,” says Shangri La’s creative director Kaye Dunnings. Not this year; not in our new prevailing reality. “You definitely wouldn’t want to take anything too spectacular while wearing a VR headset – my God!” she says. “It’s a pretty fucking crazy thing, to be honest.”. I cannot. That’s all well and good, but by now I’ve spotted an unmanned bar at the back of the venue. If turning DJs into holograms sounds tricky, imagine doing it with live bands. From November 24 to 28, the group’s three sister properties in Hong Kong – Island Shangri-La, Kowloon Shangri-La and Kerry Hotel – will host 11 wine events and introduce over 220 labels from around the world. The walls covered with radical art. While performances will be streamed on Beatport, Twitch and YouTube, to fully explore the event you’ll need to either use a desktop PC or, if you happen to have one lying around, an Oculus Rift headset. Others who had been booked to play included Diana Ross, Pet Shop Boys, Dua Lipa, Lana del Rey and Fatboy Slim. Set to take place online July 3-4, Lost Horizon will see Shangri-La team up with VRJAM and Sansar “to create the world’s largest independent music festival in virtual reality.” All I want, to be honest, is to be in a dark corner dancing with my friends, so this is the next best thing. The totemic sculptures. We'll also be hosting a Costume Contest and Dance Party during the stream on Zoom! What makes a ‘virtual performance’ different from your workaday live-streamed DJ set, I hear you ask? For the Shangri-La team, pulling this entire festival together in just a few months has proved just as taxing as the physical festival would have been. Glastonbury may be cancelled for 2020, but one of its most eye-catching areas will party on regardless: Shangri-La is to be recreated in a 3D digital form for a … The team in charge of Glastonbury Festival‘s late-night area Shangri-La have announced a new virtual reality festival titled Lost Horizon. Glastonbury's Shangri La area two host a two-day online festival on July 3-4 with a lineup including Fatboy Slim, Peggy Gou, Seth Troxler and more. Finally we arrive at the new Nomad stage, which I decide is my favourite as soon as I see how lovingly rendered the mud underfoot is. You’d never guess. The answer is that you ‘teleport’ to them at the touch of a button – which would be handy in real life, eh? However, the team behind Shangri-La is hoping to plug the gap with a virtual-reality event called Lost Horizon on 3-4 July. Each day will begin with activities like “doom yoga”, cookery classes and cocktail making, before performances from artists including Kiss, Iron Maiden and System of a Down. Available for everyone, funded by readers, Co-organiser says she hopes event, cancelled this year due to Covid, will not be pushed back to autumn, Classic sets to be shown in place of 50th anniversary festival scuppered by coronavirus, Festival confirms 2020 event due to feature Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar will no longer take place, Record 2.4 million fans tried to secure ticket for festival’s 50th year next June. Nomad represents free party culture and sound system culture, so there’s lots of underground acts on that stage.”. A virtual reality festival from the team behind Glastonbury's night-time area, Shangri-La, will aim to unify festival-goers from their own homes during lockdown. See you there. Kaye Dunnings, the creative director of the much-loved, post-apocalyptically rendered area, said: “We need unity more than ever right now, in an industry that is falling away in front of us. I booked my ticket as soon as the tour was done. Social distancing does not easily lend itself to 200,000 people getting mashed in the mud. “Michael was like: ‘What you’re doing is great; why don’t you be part of this?’ That’s how Lost Vagueness started. Glastonbury festival aiming to return in June, says Emily Eavis, David Bowie, Adele and Beyoncé: BBC unveils Glastonbury coverage, Glastonbury 2020: festival cancelled due to coronavirus outbreak, Glastonbury tickets sell out in 34 minutes, Reporting on Glastonbury 2019: 'it's a cultural event unlike any other', Glastonbury festival: 'huge improvement' in clean-up operation, Litter-picking poets and dystopian raves: readers' Glastonbury highlights. For further information visit www.losthorizonfestival.com. The event will also be streamed live via Beatport and Twitch, and via partner and artist Facebook, YouTube and Twitch accounts. “In [the early ’90s], they’d just pull up outside the fence and have their own party there,” adds Dunnings. “It’s turned from a great idea into something monstrous,” says Dunnings. Our attitude is that we’ve got to keep the vibe going. The team behind the Shangri-La area of the UK’s flagship festival has teamed up with VRJAM and Sansar “to create the world’s largest independent music festival in virtual … “There’s nothing like being in a field full of people.”, “I want to be in a dark corner dancing with my friends; this is the next best thing” – DJ Jaguar, She adds that Lost Horizon could however draw in a whole new audience: those who don’t feel physically or mentally able to deal with a sodden weekend festival can drop in for just as long as they like. – Lost Horizon is held July 3 and July 4. 8 June 2020. Inside the third area we visit, SHITV, you’ll find a huge TV screen showing 12 hours’ worth of live art, animation and films, including the 2017 documentary Lost In Vagueness. Jaguar, the host of Radio 1’s new BBC Introducing Dance show, says that the recording of her Gas Tower set with fellow DJ ABSOLUTE., in front of a green screen, threw up unusual challenges. I want to see my friends. Glastonbury Festival, which was set to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, was the first major European festival to cancel due to … As you do in 2020. My second big question is a perennial festival favourite: how the hell do I find my friends? Lots of green screen. Inside the virtual reality version of Glastonbury's Shangri-La It's a real festival in a breathtaking virtual world. The area, an outdoor art gallery situated in the notoriously hedonistic south-east corner of the festival site, will be rendered in a videogame-like 3D landscape for the online Lost Horizon festival. I might as well drink a warm beer, put some wellies and my VR headset on and watch it all weekend.”. First: How the hell am I supposed to dance in this thing? I feel as knackered as I do when I’m in the field, except instead of a crew around me it’s all been meetings over Zoom. Art director Colin Fix says he’s had similar feedback from the Shangri-La team. “Basically they get turned into holograms, a bit like Princess Leia being projected out of RDT2 or whatever he’s called, and then they appear on the stage,” explains Shangri-La’s musical director and chief vibes master Chris Tofu. A virtual reality festival from the team behind Glastonbury’s night-time area, Shangri-La, will aim to unify festival-goers from their own homes during lockdown. How does the great Shangri La tradition of getting absolutely off your nut work in VR? Glastonbury may be cancelled for 2020, but one of its most eye-catching areas will party on regardless: Shangri-La is to be recreated in a 3D digital form for a free two-day online festival in July featuring Fatboy Slim, Carl Cox, Peggy Gou and more. A virtual reality festival from the team behind Glastonbury’s night-time area, Shangri-La, will aim to unify festival-goers from their own homes during lockdown.Prompted by the In 10 days’ time the stage will host virtual performances from a stellar line-up that includes Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Peggy Gou and Seth Troxler. Sadly my Oculus cupboards are bare so a nice man from Sansar, the Californian company behind the tech side of Lost Horizon, is despatched to my house to strap me in and send me off like Alice in pursuit of the White Rabbit. The team behind Glastonbury‘s Shangri-La area has announced a new virtual reality festival, Lost Horizon.The inaugural lineup will feature performances by … We’ve been getting people like that to do all this amazing stuff which then gets green-screened in. Luckily tech has recreated Glasto's most hedonistic party – but is it any match for the real thing? The team behind Glastonbury’s Shangri-La festival has done something different: They have teamed up with VR Jam, Sansar, Orca Sound Project and Beatport to … “We were approached by a famous food delivery company who wanted you to be able to order a delivery from inside the VR, or a cocktail. Next door there’s a mocked-up TV news studio complete with a teleprompter stocked with fake news, neatly illustrating Shangri-La’s playfully anarchic ethos. As we wander between the festival’s four stages, I keep thinking how familiar it all feels. Two days. The team behind Shangri-La, Glasto’s hedonistic festival-within-a-festival, believe they can, proving that you should never underestimate the ingenuity of professional party people deprived of a party. Outside the first venue we visit, dance stage the Gas Tower, we hop up to sit on some bins and just take in the view. Despite the 2020 edition of Glastonbury being cancelled, one of the Festival’s most loved areas will be pushing ahead regardless; as south-east corner area, Shangri-La, is set to be recreated in a 3D digital form for a free two-day online festival in July.