There is no better plan for Valentine’s day than to celebrate it at the Do LaB’s Visionary Love Fest! For our fifth anniversary we’re planning something we’ve never attempted to do ever before! We’ll let you in on all the details soon. Stay tuned….

Rothbury Festival, Michigan:

Optimus Alive Festival, Portugal:

Electric Picnic Festival, Ireland:

All Points West, New York:

Lighting with out friends at Obscura Digital, Al Furjan, Dubai:

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Love,
The Do LaB

This week we’re in both Denver, CO and Stradbally, Co. Laois (Ireland) for the Cedia Convention and Electric Picnic , respectfully.

Lucent Dossier is performing again and this year we’ve continued our 2nd European tour onwards, this time with our flower, pod and Lumi structures (as seen 2 years at Coachella and this year at the Optimus Alive festivals).

In Denver, we’re working a week straight on a huge tradeshow booth/installation, the likes of which Cedia’s likely never seen before (obviously since we’ve been running into problems getting approval for Lucent’s aerialists).

Today was our 2nd day in Denver, straight on the heels of the Democratic convention and Obama’s acceptance speech (an event which made it a small obstacle to reach our hotelt the first day in) and we were joined at day’s end by Jesse and Bryan (fresh off the plane from Ireland).

We stopped work early today for some r and r and will be diving back in early manana for what we hope to be the most headway yet. These past two days have been filled with more than a few technical issues which made for some slow going, but we’re getting there.

Back in Ireland, the B-team and Lucent have 2 more days of partying and performance before their breakdown ensues.

I’ve started posting some pics on my Flickr (our WordPress isn’t displaying pics for some reason).

Josh and the rest of crew in Portugal, saddle up after the first build day at the Optimus Alive festival…

The Do LaB and Lucent Dossier teamed up for another international gig, this time in Portugal for the Optimus Alive, 3-day long music festival in Lisbon.

The Do LaB crew departed from LAX two Saturday’s ago, stopped over in Philly for an hour than made the 6-7 hour flight over to Lisbon (they say Lisboa here);  customs was hell:

The crew, which consisted of the twins (Jesse and Josh), Dede, Aaron, Bryan, Jedi, Tyler, Patricio, Cristina, Adam, Rajiv, and several others, got in around 8am Portugal time last Sunday morning.  We checked in, dumped our luggage and carpooled over to the festival grounds right away to scope things out and work out the gameplan:

Then it was off for a relaxing breakfast at a nearby, low-key neighborhood cafe;  we finally got into our rooms around 2pm (6am PST).

The first day of work began by the team meeting the 20-ft container we shipped out from LA two months prior to this gig:

We prepared for an explosive opening of the container as we had shipped a ton of Shrine’s trash art along with the rest of the installation pieces for 3 pods, 2 flowers and the Lucent water stage:

It was also a bit of a challenging day for everyone, due mostly to the jet lag and the incredibly hard concrete we were forced to drill through with our Hilti hammer-drill.

The installation moved along pretty well despite everyone’s energy level and the first crew lunch which turned out to be far from vegetarian (a major issue since the majority of the crew is vegetarian):

We finished the first day in mostly high spirits, returning to the hotel for a solid first night’s sleep before the big push began.

The second day started out again with another handsome, complimentary breakfast at our hotel.  We got to the site and launched into building pretty quickly, but got hung not long after with some design issues with the flower structures (as seen previously at Coachella 2007 and elsewhere), since we hadn’t set them up in sometime, the rock-solid ground we were forced to drill through and some missing design details which had to be rehashed out on the spot.

In the midst of our design struggle, we were happy to receive Wolfie’s arrival to the site.  After making his round of hug’s and hello’s, he dove straight into drilling and pounding rebar stakes, helping us to forge ahead with our structure construction.

Along with the ground staking issues, we had to content with some pretty strong winds, dust, the heat, and a continued jet lag.  A few crew members also started coming down with something from the wear of travel and work, but all-in-all the first few days were filled with copius amounts of laughter and beer.

(to be continued later today or manana…)

photo by: Siouxzen Kang

This Summer we are once again taking our show on the road, to the Midwest, the East Coast, and even Europe. So if you’ve been waiting for the Do LaB to come to a festival at a town near you, here’s where you’ll be able to find us over the next few months:

July 3rd-6th ~ Rothbury (Michigan)
We’ll be setting up pods hidden throughout the festival grounds.
www.rothburyfestival.com

July 10th-12th ~ Optimus Alive 08 (Portugal)
The full shebang: pods, flowers, water cannons plus DJs and Lucent Dossier performances. www.optimusalive.com

August 8th-10th ~ All Points West (New York)
Back stateside, and bringing the full boom wow with pods, flowers, water features, and DJs rockin the Do LaB Oasis.
www.apwfestival.com

August 8th-10th ~ Virgin Festival (Baltimore)
Yup, between All Points West and Virgin Fest we’ll actually be in two places at once! For the second year we’re returning to Virgin Fest to set up pod and flower lounges which will be the HQ for the festival’s Green Spot Area
www.virginfestival.com

August 29th-31st ~ Electric Picnic (Ireland)
Once again we’re electrifying Electric Picnic with pods, flowers, DJs, and Lucent Dossier performances.
www.electricpicnic.ie

photo by: Aaron Gautschi aronic7@gmail.com

we’re moving the blog base of operations over to lightninginabottle.org for the next couple of months. visit us on the news blog there as we will be posting all kinds of stuff as the preparations for LIB get underway in full force :).

boom to the wow.

(Know of any galleries or videos we’re missing? Post a link in the comments!)

CuriousJosh Lucent L’amour Gallery

Paynie’s Photobooth:

Lucent L’amour Flickr Group:

more:
garysworld.net | djwolfie

(Know of any galleries or videos we’re missing? Post a link in the comments!)

First off we want to thank everyone who came out to Lucent Lamour and braved the parking, lines and other bumps in the road and helped make it an amazing event. We do want to apologize for some of those bumps and would like offer an explanation as to what happened and to let you know that we take all of the feedback very seriously as we are determined to better the quality of our events. We really care about your experience and take great care in planning so that you will have an amazing time with us.

It is well know at this point, despite all of our planning, that we found ourselves just seven days before Lucent Lamour, homeless and desperately searching the city and all of our resources for a new venue. We were very fortunate to have found one that would allow us to have multiple music areas as well as a large outdoor area for people to enjoy shows, fresh air and to get away from the music if they chose. But because we found this venue less then a week out we lost the months of planning that went into the original location. Because each venue is so unique it requires great planning not only to be able to offer the custom environments that define what we do, but to also get the logistics dialed in to where they should be so that the experience is what you have come to expect with our events.

The long wait in line was the biggest headache for all of us. We are so sorry you had to go through that! They were way to long and there was confusion as to where to go and what line you should be in and that is our fault, partially due to the last minute change in venue. Those who paid in advance should have been able to get in much faster then they did, but there was a bottleneck where all lines converged on the security i.d. point. There should not only be clearly marked lines, but there should be multiple entrances and do to regulations imposed on us by the venue, the fire marshal and the venues security we were unable to provide that. Our door staff worked very hard and did a great job in dealing with the situation that they were put in.

We also heard complaints about security in the past few days and this is something that people will complain about forever…understandably so…they are not ‘us’. Security is a necessary evil in that they are there for our safety and protection but they also slow the process down and tend not to smile as much as we would like them to. They are hired by the venue who is also responsible for the bar and alcohol that is consumed and sold on their property. Serving alcohol, although extremely common, carries great risk for whoever is serving it. This is why EVERYONE is carded and if you do not have an i.d. you are refused entry. As frustrating and time consuming as this process is, it is the law and will continue to be done at our events as they are no longer renegade, underground warehouse parties. We are working on ways of creating the door where this will not be as much of a time sucker.

We have learned from our mistakes in the past when our event Lucent Delirium was shut down by the Los Angeles Fire Department. It was clear to us looking back on that event that we put people in an unsafe situation and many people pointed that out to us as well following the event. We made the decision then to no longer go around the regulations of the city but rather embrace them to ensure your safety and that people wont be left hanging in the middle of an event because it was getting busted. This, at times, is an extremely difficult, expensive and frustrating process but it is one that we will continue to do…for all of our sakes. With this comes a fire inspector who is at the venue for the duration of the event. His responsibility to us and you is to keep everyone safe. It was his decision early in the night to not allow ins and outs to the event. That was a decision that he makes the night of based on how the flow of traffic is and he made that declaration at 9:30 PM which is why you were told that if you leave the event you would have to wait in line to get back in. He also works with security in counting how many people come into the venue as to not have it overcrowded. In this case, he was very generous in this area and based his decision not on the legal number we were allowed but what he thought was a comfortable yet safe number. He also approached me when we were 300 people away from capacity. At that point we had people going through the lengthy line trying to get the people that had purchased tickets online to the front so they would not be stuck outside once max capacity was reached. We have heard it suggested that we decided to get more people in paying with cash opposed to people with pre sale tickets. The honest truth is that this really hurts us that anyone would think this…it is so far from the truth. If greed was our motivation then we would not go through the trouble and expense we do to bring all of the little magical pieces together that define our event. Instead we would open the doors to a club, turn the lights and sound on and take your money with a crooked grin on our faces. This is not who we are and never will be.

On the topic of money, this now brings us to the bar. We know the prices were high but this, most unfortunately, was out of our control. The events where we do have control of the bar the prices never exceed $6 and a portion of that goes to Sonic Muze, a non profit organization that puts art supplies and musical instruments in local needy schools. We were not afforded this luxury at the new location and the control was taken out of our hands. We did negotiate having the prices lowered from what they were originally set at.
We also want to apologize to you and our musical acts for the loss of power and sound in the peek time of event. This is something that we are embarrassed by and should never happen. We are still trying to determine the exact cause of the malfunction with the generator but we can tell you that it was not an issue with the power but rather the motor and fuel line on the generator. According to our understanding, this generator was recently serviced and is a relatively new generator. This issue should not have happened. A lot of people are putting the blame on Bassnectar and how much more power he tends to pull during his sets. This is simply not the case and we take full responsibility for this as we are the ones that rented and operated the generator. We also want to thank those who helped us remedy the problem and who left the party to go get another generator for us to use.

It is always our goal to constantly better the quality of our productions and to make the next event the best event. We take great pride in our work and put in countless hours to achieve this as we strive for perfection. We will continue to produce these events and will continue to count on your support because you are the ones that add the magic that makes what we do memorable. If there is anything that has not been addressed here that you would like for us to know, please let us know.

Oh, and we put in a call to the city about too many one way streets. It’ll never happen again.

With love,
The Do LaB

more…

Last Friday things were running smoothly in the Lucent L’amour world. After months of preparation we managed to put together an impressive lineup of artists and entertainment, and we devised a grand master plan complete with bad-ass decor installations. All we had to do was just wait until Monday and go build it… but late Friday evening we got the call. Due to unfortunate circumstances our location was not going to be permitted for the event.

You can imagine what was going through our minds when we found out we didn’t have a location 7 days prior to our biggest LA event to date:

Aaaaaaah!!!

Our team got on the phones with everyone who knew anything and they called everyone who knew anything and after only 24 hours of freaking out, we managed to find a new location:

613 Imperial St.
Los Angeles, CA 90021
A Premiere Event Location
(map)

And it’s even better than the original!! 2 huge rooms and a massive outdoor area in downtown LA. 100% permitted.

The only bummer about the new space was the fact that all the decor and props we designed and built wouldn’t quite fit right…

(old floor plan):

So Sunday night we hit the drawing board and started redesigning the event from scratch. Something that took us many weeks to do in the first place. Definitely a challenge that we’re up for. Come Monday we had our crew of artists building in the warehouse, putting together new ideas that are definitely going to look amazing. The last minute challenge is definitely inspiring some new decor that we wouldn’t have had if we used our original location.

Briging the party to life:

keep looking, it’s gotta be in one of these boxes:

maybe it’s over there…

I think I see it:

huh?

more to come…..