Inside Heather Shaw and Vita Motus’ Mind-Melting World of Stage Design

While there’s nothing we love more than to rollick in the beats of our favorite DJs and producers, many of us travel all over the world to attend festivals and tour shows to be part of an experience. Each year, no stage looms larger than bassPOD at EDC Las Vegas, which serves annually as a second home to a tight-knit community of bass die-hards. Their collective passion for breakneck beats is reflected in every inch of bassPOD’s heroic 360 degree structures, leaving both revelers and onlookers completely enamored by its presence. Similarly, at Lightning in a Bottle in California, house and techno music lovers congregate at the Woogie stage stepping themselves into a tizzy within vibrant patterned waves for hours on end. It’s these experiences – the vibes, the energy – that electronic music lovers set out in search of and live for.

The woman responsible for these electrifying realities is Heather Shaw, the founder and CEO of Vita Motus, a multi-disciplinary design studio that specializes in futuristic, high-tech productions that are quite literally out of this world. For well over a decade now, Heather has lead the charge in pushing visual, spatial, and structural boundaries for some of the world’s most prominent brands, music festivals, and chart-topping artists. When we walk into a festival or show and have that unearthly, mind-melting experience, we have Heather to thank. Recently, we had the opportunity to talk with her.

One might wonder what path to follow to achieve stage design superstardom. While Heather graduated from Art Center College of Art and Design in Pasadena with a BS in Industrial and Transportation design, we in the electronic music community are blessed that her ambition and passion propelled a truly unique journey.

“I opened Vita Motus in 2006; it began as what I thought would be an industrial design firm. At the time, I was designing cars for VW Audi. While working there, I found that automotive design, while amazing, evolved a bit slower than I had imagined it could; the success of a design was intrinsically dependent on whether a large majority of the globe would purchase it. This meant that the auto industry was less likely to try unique or niche designs.

On the side, I began to design projects with friends for festivals and live music to satisfy an urge to be wild in design, to test new concepts and make big moves that were not so closely tied to global marketing. When the economy went south in 2008-09, the auto industry became even more difficult for designers at satellite studios, and many of us lost our jobs. From there, I chose to follow the entertainment passion and let the design studio take over.”

Vita Motus’ portfolio features a compilation of dynamic and ethereal aesthetics of dream-like structures and otherworldly elements only the most creative of minds could bring into existence. While navigating through the studio’s process on their website, one statement that caught our attention was a quote from Albert Einstein. It reads “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.” As one of history’s most innovative geniuses, Einstein’s words form an intriguing statement, but we wondered how exactly Heather and her team incorporate them into their productions?

“This quote exemplifies how I like to begin our process by focusing on being different, making mistakes, trying things people think will not work, and getting wild with the first round of designs.For me, innovation is the product of experiences, influences, surroundings, the more you can step outside of what is comfortable, the more you can find what is new. Once you venture into what is innovative, you must connect it to logical structure, making sure it functions with redesign and testing for viability.

I feel like design can get stagnant if you consistently tie it only to what you perceive is possible. Our dream is to constantly try impossible things, as Einstein did, and we hope to make choices that can help to shape the future of design. In fact, our motto is “design the future” – a statement that we always try to recall in our process and is also meant to inspire others to think differently and do their part in shaping what’s to come.”

This year we had the fortune of experiencing one of Vita Motus’ most recent endeavors first hand — the re-imagined bassPOD stage at EDC Las Vegas. In 2015, the design studio was commissioned by Insomniac to deliver the Bassrush stage’s first unearthly experience – the Dirty Robots. Conceptualized to be a fleet of seven goliath-sized vessels that traveled to space and returned home marked by their journey, LA Weekly voted it the best stage at EDC that year. Bassheads and other Insomniac headliners alike were so enamored by the magnitude and powerful presence of the Dirty Robots that expectations were high when word spread that a new concept would be revealed in 2018. Not surprisingly, Vita Motus delivered big with an entirely new evolution of the bassPOD stage in the form of a 360-degree presentation of intergalactic Space Monkeys.

“To follow the Dirty Robots, Insomniac wanted something iconic and on a heroic-scale. We wanted to further advance the narrative we’d begun with the Dirty Robots, imagining these Monkeys as space explorers landing on Earth.We tried to do something different this year where we made the volume of the stage exist mostly in the audience. The stage itself was smaller than the Monkeys in the crowd, to focus the design energy on the “headliners” (as Insomniac refers to the audience). We wanted to maintain an iconic design, using geometry to create creatures that are made of strong faceted shapes, but still have a face.

One of the most exciting parts about bassPOD is that when we premier a new stage, we know that we have at least two more years of adding on features, so we’re really looking forward to building out the Space Monkey backstory further.”

It turns out that transforming one iconic stage into another emblem of glory is an exciting yet extensive process. Heather expressed that her favorite moment of the “Space Monkeys” production came in the final days of work.

“I like when we have final renderings that we are really excited about, and when we are installing the piece full scale. Most of the time it looks exactly like those renderings.”

The bassPOD is one of many stages found at the almighty EDC Las Vegas. In 2018, the neon-lit grounds hosted 8 stages and five extraordinarily quirky art cars. Given Heather’s penchant for creativity, we wondered if there were any other stages she was itching to get her hands on to re-imagine in form and function.

“Interesting question. I really enjoy the effort and work Insomniac puts in to each and every stage. They all have well thought out musical themes that pair with unique designs, shapes, characters, performance and style. I think it would be more fun to imagine a new zone from the ground up with them.”

Outside of the terrain under the electric sky, Heather and her team have taken on a world of challenges and dominated each of them in their own respect. From vibrant, whimsical havens to larger-than-life, pyrotechnic masterpieces, Vita Motus has shown a unique ability to deliver show-stopping productions in a wide range of environments, having designed stages for festivals including Electric Forest, Lightning in a Bottle, Boom, Middlelands, and Coachella.

“In the process of designing any festival environment, my focus always comes back to the attendees experience, meaning, what are they looking for and how can my design help get them there. With that in mind, whether it’s heady laser-infused drum & bass or a colorful house dance party, it’s about making sure the design supports and encourages full enjoyment of the musical experience and taking people to another world.”

Vita Motus’ imprint reaches even beyond the festival realm. The LA-based design firm has done stages for American Idol and a number of the most influential artists and brands, including Amon Tobin, The Chainsmokers, Kaskade, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, and Shakira.

“On a conceptual level, a festival stage design needs to accommodate many different musical acts and stay entertaining to the same group of people for days at a time.

With a tour, there is a specific story and creative that you perfect to hold strong for roughly 90 min. It’s far more detailed in terms of media and direction, and logistics focus on the tour and how to make something powerful yet efficiently mobile.”

By now, it should go without saying that Heather is unequivocally a badass. It takes some exceptionally rare talent to be a female business owner in the entertainment industry. Heather has built a company that dominates her field in ways that most of us will only ever dream of achieving. In other words, she is the definition of a Girlboss. Without fully revealing our undeniable admiration in hopes of avoiding a fan girl scenario, we asked Heather what it’s like to be a leading female working in the industry, and if she had any pointers for the rest of us.

“Female-business owners definitely face challenges, from auto to entertainment, a good amount of industries are historically male dominated. You have to work twice as hard to gain respect as a woman, and respect is extremely important.

The steps I’ve taken helped me to maintain a footing and believe in myself – focusing on learning as much as I could, trying and testing the boundaries of my own strength, failing and succeeding, but always learning and evolving. At a certain point I discovered the value of my voice as a minority in the room, one with a unique point of view not heard from as often, but representing a majority of the overall population.

I try to support and collaborate with other female-led businesses whenever possible and partner with vendors who demonstrate respect for all viewpoints. For women trying to break into the industry, I would point toward new initiatives that I’m really excited to see like Live Nation’s Women Nation Fund that’s working to create funding and mentorship opportunities for underrepresented female entrepreneurs in live music businesses.”

Truly epic experiences seem to always bring about wishes of “living here forever.” We tend to succumb to the magnetizing environment we’ve spent hours reveling in and dream of eternally losing ourselves. Heather and Vita Motus have created so many awe-inspiring worlds that we could truly live forever in. So to close the interview, we had one last burning question: “If you could incorporate elements of your stage designs in to a home for yourself, which would you choose?”

“I would love to mash up a bunch of our designs, from some of the aspects of the Boom temples to the robotic and geometric concepts in other projects. It would be open with views to the sky, turning into an entirely different creature at night.”

Connect with Vita Motus:
https://www.facebook.com/VitaMotus
https://twitter.com/VitaMotus
https://www.instagram.com/vitamotus
https://vitamotus.com

All photos courtesy of Vita Motus.

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