Travis Scott performed on stage in Sweaty Sands, the beach town between Shark's Tooth and Pacific Park. These venues are located in the multiverse of Fortnite, the video game dubbed "The Instagram of video games" by New York Magazine.
The concert was the culmination of Astronomical, the event Fortnite created in a week where you could buy Travis Scott skins, emoticons and gear. It was an incredible success: 12 million people connected on Fortnite's servers alone, not counting those who watched via Twitch and other streaming platforms. In short, as many as 12 million connected users who witnessed the future of live music, or maybe the future of everything else.
Travis Scott performed for about ten minutes, even presenting a world premiere track. There was no better time to coat the event with a momentous patina. While due to the global Covid19 pandemic, people are getting more and more used to the idea of not being able to attend a concert for an indefinite amount of time, Fortnite did what it's been trying to do all along: replace physical life, the so-called real world.
It was possible to buy the full set of skins and gear and walk around on Battle Royale Island killing people dressed as Travis Scott. The best way to prepare for the event. On the houses of the Fortnite map - inspired by the different urban and rural landscapes of the USA - were hung posters of the concert; to the south, around Sweaty Sands, the stage was under construction.
Wandering around the surrounding Hawaiian-esque islands, you could see Travis Scott's giant heads looming over the sea and there were challenges and rewards attached, such as dancing Sicko Mode in a couple of places on the map during a game. The concert, in short, had its own merchandising, its own marketing, and a general reality effect independent of our own.
It was an effect of realism created by the possible world of Fortnite, with its decor of characters, places, spaces and times. With its cartoon aesthetic that manages to make implicit the violence of the game, where you can buy skins of giant tomatoes, anthropomorphic hot dogs with sunglasses or smiling cats with the body of The Rock.
After all, it wasn't so traumatic to put Travis Scott inside this world... And Travis Scott, today perhaps the rapper with the most flair for trends (and money), has long been an ambassador of the game. It's also thanks to his streams with Ninja - the "David Beckham of Fortnite" - that the game has increased its influence in pop culture.
What is a digital concert?
In Travis Scott's concert, you had to connect half an hour beforehand by entering the event's waiting room. You could synchronize with three other connected friends and enter the live show together, where there were 50 other attendees. This is a fundamental technical aspect, and the limit with the most room for improvement: the 12 million people connected were not in the same virtual place, but located on different servers.
You landed near the location of the concert, divided into two teams, and shot each other. You did what you do in Fortnite always. At some point, however, with the approach of the beginning, it was clear that that shooting was aimless. You huddled near the stage; foolishly perhaps thinking you didn't want to lose your front row seat. Meanwhile, it was possible to build endless ramps, swim in circles, and dance in groups like at a rave.
At one point the participating character could only perform three gestures, including waving a flaming rod in the sky: a reference to the famous meme of Scott screaming in despair at a concert. When a visual of the event appeared on the screen - the stage screen - people started shooting at him: it was a ridiculous moment, but shooting is still a form of communication in Fortnite. It was an experience close to a real pre-concert, and one of the aspects that most differentiated the event from any streaming.
You are incorporated into the virtual entity, but still individualized: with the skin that we had chosen, the dances that we had chosen. Clearly, it was a puppet, but it was still a prosthesis of our identity present in a venue set up for a concert. It wasn't like actually being there, but the degree of presence was still greater than a live feed on Instagram.
Planet Travis Scott, ironically resembling the coronavirus, appeared on the screen and got closer and closer. Then it overflowed, hitting Fortnite's like a meteorite from which a giant Travis Scott was born and started singing Sicko Mode. At that point the participant's puppet is tossed around all over the place in a world with twisted laws of physics and Travis Scott - shirtless, cargo, jordans - dominating everything.
The sky was first a cold, lunar blue, then fiery, apocalyptic, torn by lightning. Each puppet was splashed into the sky, then plunged back down to earth; it was in the middle of a meteor storm, or in the depths of the ocean, or desperately hurtling toward an otherworldly light ahead.
Instead of trying to recreate the experience of a concert, Fortnite tried to reimagine it. To do so, it used virtual language, and the power of its technical means. It made up for Travis Scott's physical absence by creating a highly immersive experience. It is clear that the rapper was not singing his songs live, but at the same time the words were perfectly synchronized with the visuals, expressing well the dark circus and space imagery of Astroworld.
As the live show continued, the giant puppet's presence became more incidental, making the experience increasingly abstract. The videos found on YouTube fail to fully restore the immersivity: it wasn't just about the visual processing, but the interactive possibility. The ability to move the character within the crazy world, to receive the little jolts on the joypad during the most violent transitions. It wasn't exactly virtual reality, but it was close.
If you look closely, the visuals inside concerts, and even all of the increasingly elaborate stage equipment, have always tried to provide the kind of immersivity that Scott's 12 million concertgoers experienced. But even for an artist known for the scenic complexity of his live shows like Travis Scott, it's not possible to pull it off. It's clear that it's the particular situation we're living in, with the entire world population forced into quarantine, that has coated the event with significance, opening up unprecedented scenarios for the future of live music. Artists are trying to reinvent their performances, proliferating live streaming on YouTube and Instagram. But video game platforms, with the power of their technical means, are emerging as the players capable of suggesting the widest potential. Travis Scott's live stream on Fortnite did not suggest that it could replace the material and social experience of a concert, but it certainly took the current "Streaming War" to another revolutionary level.