Following the introduction of broadcast AR to Coachella’s Main Stage livestream in 2022, All of it Now returned in 2023 to expand the system into a multi-artist production. Working across creative teams for Gorillaz, Bad Bunny, and BLACKPINK, AOIN served as the technical and creative integration layer connecting each project to the festival’s live broadcast environment. The project included Gorillaz with Nexus and Swear, Bad Bunny with STURDY. and Aura, and BLACKPINK with the Forward Team, with Nexus also contributing to the festival’s interstitial content.
The expanded scope required a more structured approach to bringing multiple creative teams into the same production. AOIN developed a standardized onboarding and ingest pipeline, establishing the technical requirements for broadcast AR while maintaining separation between each artist’s project and creative workflow. This allowed the different teams to develop independently while feeding into a shared operational system.
The content itself also varied significantly from artist to artist. Some systems were driven by timecode and automated playback, while others relied on manual triggering or interactive, physics-driven environments. AOIN developed a common control framework using Stage Precision and custom Unreal Engine scripting, allowing operators to manage scenes, cues, engine status, and individual machines from a unified interface. Six Unreal engines operated concurrently within the system, with the control framework also supporting camera blocking and calibration.
One of the more technically demanding creative elements was the “Mirage” effect, which required physical objects to refract through digital AR elements. AOIN worked with STYPE to develop a custom compositing solution for the effect, while also contributing creative elements and sequencing to the surrounding interstitial content.
AOIN also captured raw camera plates and tracking data throughout the production, creating a library of real-world camera and environment data that could be used for future AR development and previsualization.
The 2023 production represented a significant expansion of the AR system established the previous year, moving from individual broadcast AR moments toward a shared technical framework capable of supporting multiple artists, creative teams, and Unreal environments within the same live production.
