The tech behind Taylor Swift concert wristbands
Are you wowed by the moving light patterns at the Taylor Swift Eras Tour? And have you wondered the way those wristbands work? Here's how.
Taylor Swift performs onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Ford Field on June 09, 2023 in Detroit, Michigan /Getty Images
The Taylor Swift Eras Tour has wowed the audience with some cool LED tech. Especially when the slithering snakes formed by twinkling lights of the wristband “crawl” across the audience in the arena.
🏟️| The light-up wristbands for #TSTheErasTour create slithering snakes in the audience during LWYMMD 🐍 This cool trick was also done during the reputation Stadium Tour!
(via @JAlexanderwrite) pic.twitter.com/n8U9gr0woL
— Taylor Swift Updates 🏟️ (@swifferupdates) April 7, 2023
While people are wondering whether there’s some high-tech involved, it’s not as complicated as it seems. Coldplay, Lady Gaga, and many other K-Pop concerts have used this LED technology in the audience’s wristbands to create immersive visual effects. “It’s funny because oftentimes people think there’s GPS in each of the devices, or there’s a lot of advanced AI technology,” says Vincent Leclerc, co-founder and CEO of PixMob in an interview with WSJ. “But we are really like, the old-school technology,” he chuckles.
PixMob is a leading concert LED company that is also behind several impressive lighting designs for concerts including the Taylor Swift Reputation Stadium Tour, Lady Gaga Chromatica Ball Tour, and Coldplay Music of the Spheres World Tour. Leclerc explained the three simple and “old fashion” ways to make those wristbands work.
The first is using radio frequency, which is very common in stadiums for sports competitions. The wristbands are equipped with a signal receptor and a tiny computer to process the signal into lighting colors. An operator would send out the signals from a small control board, and change the colors in different sections of the audience. This works very effectively when the audience sits in designated areas and doesn’t change their seats.
The second method is slightly more complicated. It uses infrared technology, which is the same as a remote control for the TV. With this method, different moving patterns and shapes can be displayed like a digital canvas. By setting up robotic transmitters all over the arena, operators can send out lighting data through these transmitters to wherever they want, and create moving imageries like snakes. By placing masks on the transmitters, they can also create shapes like hearts.
The last technique is Bluetooth, which is often seen at K-pop concerts. The fans would connect their light sticks or wristbands to their phones using via Bluetooth with the information about their seating. This allows the lighting operators to create highly-detailed patterns or words with light.
