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Introducing wearable LEDs into dance performances can spice up choreography
those few years, people had resorted to watching live shows and videos on their smartphones and laptops. Despite having XR and AR, there was a hunger for live performance because that simply wasn’t the same. Thankfully, those trends have calmed down a little now and it’s back to being all about the live experience. For MPLUSPLUS, the bounce back was huge. We got enquiries from outside of Japan, including from American sports teams. As we speak, we have more than 30 enquiries from sporting teams, and the world seems to have re-focused on creating live experiences. What’s next for MPLUSPLUS? We went from creating LED costumes to flags and ribbons – these developments were achieved by making our hardware smaller and smaller. Now that we’ve gotten the devices even smaller and therefore lighter, we’re even able to attach them to drones and fly them around – generally putting them in places and positions that weren’t accessible before. We’re also trying to challenge ourselves to create something that’s even bigger, as we continue to work on shrinking the hardware. A few years ago, we released a flying screen as a trial. With each of these new developments, we’re able to challenge ourselves further, with 15-metre or even up to 100-metre scale LED productions.
Branching out into light-up flags and ribbons helped MPLUSPLUS break into global markets
That definitely has to be my time as a contestant on America’s Got Talent back in 2022. This was one of our first – and biggest – global stage performances, and I was even one of the dancers. It was our first time using a new product – the world’s first programmable LED ribbons. After completing our performance, Simon Cowell commented that it was like a Las Vegas live show, and hearing that gave me so much confidence in what we were doing. It also gave the company a huge boost in exposure, and catapulted us to where we are now. How is live performance changing, and what role does AV like that offered by MPLUSPLUS play? Covid-19 definitely changed everything quite drastically. It created a time when
no live shows were happening, and nobody was able to go anywhere. During that period, a lot of digital services like XR and AR rose to the forefront, but our company was a little late to adopting those tools. Just after the pandemic ended, people were craving live experiences again, so everyone came back even bigger than pre-pandemic – particularly when it came to sports and music events. For
We got enquiries from outside of Japan, including from American sports teams. As we speak, we have more than 30 enquiries from sporting teams
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