We don’t need to introduce Beyoncé! Since she became a solo singer, she’s done 9 solo tours and nearly 200 live performances. We love her (and her tours) for her changing styles, powerful messages and overall energy. But we also love her for her use of tech, too! So read on below about why her Renaissance tour was a standout…
Robot Arms
Now, robot arms were used many times during Bey’s performances during this tour. She had them framing her during ‘cosy’, fanning her during ‘heated’, and changing her outfit (which we’ll discuss later). Each robot arm cost around $100,000 too, so she put them to work.
To pull this all off, the programmers worked hard to ensure the robot arms moved precisely and in time with the music. They mapped out pre-planned paths for the arms to move in, so there’s no way of adjusting to changes in the environment while the performance is happening. This meant that Beyoncé also needed to stay on top of her precision; if not, she would collide with these (heavy) robot arms, probably causing injury!
Colour Changing Outfits
Before performing ‘church girl’, Bey arrives on stage wearing a white coat and headdress. Two robot arms then appear, gliding over the outfit. Suddenly, the outfit changes from all-white to an array of stained-glass colours from head to toe! So how did they do it? For this look, Bey worked with designer Kunihiko Morinaga who uses a mix of photosensitive fabrics and UV light to make the outfit come to life. However, the effects of UV rays on these fabrics are always temporary, so Bey used this coat as a transition to reveal another outfit underneath. Otherwise, her outfit would go back to white around 3 minutes after the UV light stopped!
Conclusion
We’ve listed some of the big examples of the tech Beyoncé used and It’s clear it made this tour way more exciting, and we’re excited to see what Beyoncé comes up with next. Did we miss any examples? Let us know!
