The Fluffy Cloud

THE FLUFFY CLOUD

TPi’s Jacob Waite chats to Jorge Perdomo – the US-based artist behind The Fluffy Cloud: a 30ft-tall steel cocoon-like structure dubbed the world’s first touring venue in the time of social distancing…

While the live event experience we are accustomed to is rapidly innovating, US-based inventor and artist, Jorge Perdomo has unveiled his latest project – The Fluffy Cloud, dubbed the world’s first touring venue and a uniquely COVID-19 friendly live experience, which may offer a model for live entertainment to bounce back sooner than expected.

Perdomo made his artistic debut at the 2019 Burning Man with The Fluffy Cloud. Part art installation, performance platform and light show, the 30ft-tall and equally wide cocoon-like structure – think Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds’ Martian Fighting Machine meets Arcadia’s Pangea – was designed to provide outdoor concertgoers with an unprecedented 360° visual and aural experience.

The installation quickly became the talk of the 2019 Burn, drawing throngs of attendees to nightly performances by a wide variety of worldclass DJs such as Adana Twins, Diplo, Flume and more. The Fluffy Cloud reappeared by invitation at the prestigious Art Basel show in Miami. The Fluffy Cloud’s 2020 tour saw the structure circumnavigate the globe in seven different cities before COVID-19 hit. The challenging time ahead allowed the creative freedom for Perdomo to re-imagine his business plan in the time of lockdown: looking towards innovation in live production and what the entertainment business may breed once the world re-opens.

“The circular format of The Fluffy Cloud enables social distancing, added on top of the fact that it is an outdoor, open-air experience that make The Fluffy Cloud safe,” Perdomo explained. “It represents a setup with seating for up to 600 people within The Fluffy Cloud’s 100ft diameter performance space while still maintaining social distancing.”

Granted, this is 600 attendees instead of the 2,000-plus before the onset of the global pandemic, but it is a great example of the innovation that the entertainment world will need to adopt in order to survive and thrive in the future. “The Fluffy Cloud can also be easily modified into a dance venue

The Fluffy Cloud Lead Artist/Founder, Jorge Perdomo.

with spots that are painted on the ground, instead of bar tables – in which case, it could be an outdoor club or biergarten type of space with dance room for up to 300 people.”

The idea behind The Fluffy Cloud came from Perdomo’s frustration and boredom with the repetitive and uncomfortable format of a front-to-back performance space, where audiences are crammed toward the front, all facing the same direction. Perhaps serendipitously, The Fluffy Cloud ended up being a perfect fit for a new world where live experiences must take social distancing into account for any event.

“I believe that art reaches its full potential when it is reinterpreted and combined with other pieces of art. From that perspective, I think of The Fluffy Cloud as a very special paintbrush which, if placed in the hands of other dedicated creatives, can create unmatched experiences,” explained Perdomo. “For this reason, I don’t call it a ‘touring club’ because the Fluffy Cloud can and has been used for everything from yoga sessions and sound baths, to dinners and corporate events.” Thanks to his previous background as the inventor and Co-Founder of goTenna, a tech company he left to pursue his passions in art and music, Perdomo was searching for a way to design an in-the-round venue to make it a more comfortable and connected experience for concertgoers.

Having worked on it as a side project, Perdomo made the leap to sell a portion of his shares in goTenna and transform into a full-time Fluffy Clouder in 2018. “Any artist will confirm that art has to be self-sustaining. I saw this as an opportunity to make it work in the industry that I’ve always lo ved – working with performance artists and the team behind the scenes.”

Ho wever, it was no walk in the park for Perdomo. While donations from friends also helped push along the innovation, it mostly became a burden that he had to shoulder, having quit a nine-to-five to dedicate himself fully to the cause. “I really overextended at one point and went temporarily bankrupt because I was so in love with the concept, and I wanted to make it a reality,” he conceded. “At one-point I was in too deep; it was scary but at the end of the day we were able to pull it off, by the skin of our teeth.

The response ever since from the Burning Man community was universal – excitement and awe.”

What started initially as a Burning Man project, harnessing the help of volunteers, now has evolved into a full-time, profitable, passion project. “I always knew that health and safety would be of paramount importance. Th e Fluffy Cloud had to be designed to the highest standards possible, so it could be permitted in several states as a touring setup,” Perdomo commented. “In fact, it’s now radically over engineered, which allowed me to get permits in states like Florida or California where hurricanes and or earthquakes are commonplace.”

As w ell as stability, Perdomo pointed out the importance of stage craft – making sure the project could be built and taken down quickly and safely – drawing inspiration from SpaceX. “The reason that SpaceX rockets are a maximum of 8.5ft wide is because that’s the maximum width you can carry something on the road without it being a wide load,” he reported. “The moment you become a wide load, your transport costs go through the roof, which is a big chunk of our setup costs – so the requirement was everything we do needs to fit into a standard 50ft transport trailer.”

The Fluffy Cloud breaks down into 46 primary pieces that use the same bolts – Perdomo signalled the good work of two volunteers who really helped him along the way: Sound Engineer, Deniz Akyurek of Perpetual Wave Productions in partnership with Hennessey Sound Design and Lighting Designer, Gene Harrison.

“We a re a scrappy amateur team, so we’re used to finding ways to do things at a lower cost. The rest of the team involved in the build are paid contractors – professional fabricators and engineers that have worked on Burning Man and have a wealth of experience executing projects in a desert. As an IP67-rated facility, The Fluffy Cloud is designed to withstand

rain, dust, and is really hardened. In fact, anywhere we visit now is easy,” he laughed. “In an ideal world, where we use smaller teams, we can build The Fluffy Cloud in two, 12-hour shifts. We’ve got five or six builds under our belts at this point, and each time we’re documenting the process and improving consistently.”

The entire structure is steel, which is painted inside and out to prevent corrosion. There’s a main structure and exoskeleton that spans the circumference. The ‘fluffy’ outer shell is made from a blend of material – mostly glue and Polyfill, coated in a variety of substances to make it fireproof. “A lot of experimentation has gone in to giving texture to The Fluffy Cloud’s darker and lighter sections,” Perdomo commented. “We worked closely with an audio team to test and tune the output of the sound system, which must punch through a few inches worth of material – making it acoustically transparent and fireproof was a huge challenge but after a few months of experimenting, we’ve come up with a formula.”

Made from steel, fibre, fireproofing materials, glue, Pollyfill, 33,000 LEDs and 6,000 pounds of audio, The Fluffy Cloud is a true feat of engineering. “The whole thing weighs in at around 18,000lbs,” he concluded. “It’s a heavy project, which we were working on nonstop for around 10 months in the run up to Burning Man. Since then, we have spent weeks on the optimisations – simply put, we learn each time we deploy the structure.”

With an undoubtedly bright future, The Fluffy Cloud now has plans for upcoming tour stops in Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, as the world’s first ‘touring event space’. TPi Photos: The Fluffy Cloud www.thefluffycloud.org Instagram: @realfluffycloud

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