A new experience taking place at 35,000 feet above sea level

Customers traveling on Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Austin to attend SXSW will have a special surprise in store next month; the company is offering a special FlyingLab pre-conference experience complete with a live performance on board. As part of the non-stop flight on March 7, all passengers on flight LH 448 will take part in FUTURO — A by the Waldorf Project. The creators are calling it the world’s “highest experiment in empathy engineering” and “the world’s first fully immersive and integrated performance staged at altitude.” All 255 attendees will experience the work in complete darkness and the Airbus A330 they’re riding on will be equipped with a custom sound system to support the piece.

We asked some questions of Sean Rogg, the creator and director of the Waldorf Project, to find out more about this high-flying immersive experience.

No Proscenium (NP): Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background in the immersive arts?

Sean Rogg (SR): I have been a visual artist for twenty years, focused on film and video art until the Waldorf Project was born seven years ago. I have always been excited by emotional storytelling. How people feel or can be manipulated into feeling.

I explored this concept to great effect with my films but felt there was potential to go way, way further. After a test performance in 2008 and four further years of research and development, Chapter One of the project was staged in 2012.

NP: What, in a nutshell, is the FUTURO — A project about?

SR: FUTURO started as the third official ‘chapter’ of the project and has expanded into two additional special performances. At its core, it’s an experiment in empathy engineering.

We began the experiment with 40 people in London, then the same creative concept was expanded into a massive audience of 4,200 in a Thai jungle — and next it will be for 255 people on a transatlantic flight at 35,000 feet.

NP: Why did you create this experience? What inspired the team?

SR: I like pushing boundaries, exploring the void, the unknown…and my team shares that vision and drive to create a new art form. We wanted to create something straddling theatre/art/science and gastronomy, but what has been manifested through each subsequent ‘chapter,’ again and again is always, clearly something new.

NP: How is the flight itself incorporated into the work?

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SR: Firstly it presents one of the hardest places to do an art performance — the challenges both logistically and legally are immense. So of course that turned me on.

But I also want to see if the effects of the empathy engineering experiment will be enhanced at high altitude. The scientific community feels it will, as do I.

NP: What kinds of constraints are you working with given that the experience happens in-flight?

SR: It has taken months, working closely with aeronautical engineers, scientists, aviation authorities, the FlyingLab team and the Lufthansa flight and legal team. As everything on a flight is related to safety, each little thing involves a lot of people and many, many rules. And we had a LOT of things we wanted to change.

Just turning off the ‘No Smoking’ lights, for example, took two weeks of talks. There is no ‘Off’ button for the ‘No Smoking’ signs — it just doesn’t exist! — and they haven’t been turned off in twenty years. It meant digging deep into the brain of the plane and changing the code specifically for our flight.

NP: How are you designing around audience agency, consent, and safety?

SR: Safety is paramount and the Lufthansa team are watching my back constantly. But I want to give the audience a real reaction. A real emotional experience that they have never had before. That means taking them to state of mind they would never have experienced before, let alone on a plane.

The passengers will be communicated with at various intervals before and during the flight to get them ready. This communication is also part of the performance, building excitement and anticipation. And opening the imagination…

NP: What do you hope participants take away from the experience?

SR: We will blow everybody’s fucking mind. (We will, we always do.)

Learn more about Lufthansa flight 448 and FlyingLab.

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