The ABBA Arena has opened at east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as the venue for Swedish pop group ABBA’s virtual reunion tour, ABBA Voyage.
Purpose-built for ABBA’s virtual concert, which kicked off on 27 May, the ABBA Arena is a fully demountable building that can be relocated when the show ends. It was designed by Stufish.
“The ABBA Arena was designed from the inside out, meaning that the show requirements and the audience experiences were the core driver of everything that followed,” Stufish CEO Ray Winkler told Dezeen.
“The seating arrangement and the relationship to the screen and stage called for a large single-span space that could provide all of the logistical and technical requirements of the show while maintaining and augmenting the magic of the performance,” he added.
“It blends live performance with Abbatars in a way never done before, fusing the digital with the physical that blurs the lines between the two.”
ABBA Voyage is a virtual show where Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid perform as digital versions of themselves. The digital avatars, or ‘ABBAtars’, perform for 90 minutes.
They were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a visual effects company that was founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas. The band performed in motion capture suits, with cameras scanning their body movements and facial expressions.
Digital ‘ABBAtars’ perform the group’s hit songs
“The ABBA Arena, a portable venue, will set the standard for future shows where the physical and the digital fuse to create a new genre of experience in the physical world,” Winkler said.
“This unique project provided the perfect blend of architecture and entertainment, allowing us to create an amazing immersive experience for the audience, that has never been seen before,” added Stufish partner Alicia Tkacz.
ILMxLAB, Lucasfilm’s immersive entertainment studio, recently previewed a Star Wars VR experience inspired by the Galaxy’s Edge expansion at Disneyland Resort.
Images: Stufish
