Thinking Inside the Bubble

The Flaming Lips performing live on Colbert

With the outbreak of the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders around the world, many of the activities we once took for granted are now off the table for the time being including stage shows, and that has taken a heavy toll on the events industry these past couple of months.

Veteran psychedelic-rock outfit, The Flaming Lips, were able to innovate on what has become a well-known stage gimmick to fans and leverage it to give a memorable live performance for broadcast. Group leader, Wayne Coyne, has for many years appeared in the audience inside a clear inflatable bubble, so “bubbling” audience members and stage hands seems a natural extension of their brand while coincidentally allowing for an event to safely take place where it might otherwise have not.

Not to suggest that we should all be walking around in human-sized capsules (or am I?), but this is a solid example of using ingenuity and innovative thinking to overcome social gathering limitations in the pandemic-stricken world we now live in.