Kid Infinity in 3D: Tron has nothing on these guys

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve seen the future. It’s bright and beautiful and comes right at your face at 1,000 MPH, like an electronic freight train on a runaway course.

Yep, it’s Kid Infinity in 3D.

Kid Infinity has long been one of Los Angeles’ best bands. They make fun dance music you can party to. Then, when the party’s over and their songs are still burned into your cerebellum, you realize—hey! Ryan Pardeiro and Nathan Huberwere pretty clever ‘cuz they actually made me think about beats in a new way. Imagine that. Bastards.

Then there’s the awesome video they released earlier this year. So good.

Now the duo is back with an achievement that would make the pros cry with jealousy (no exaggeration): Kid Infinity—the 3D experience arrives at The Smell Saturday night.

I was very lucky to catch a sneak preview of this truly cutting-edge, paradigm-pulverizing audiovisual performance. I swore not to talk about or show anything I saw.

But…I just can’t keep quiet any longer. Hopefully Ryan and Nathan don’t sue me.

Photos: Sean Carnage

This past weekend, Kid Infinity invited me to a secret production facility deep in the Santa Clarita Valley. I’ve worked at a lot of production houses. They are usually held together with gaffer tape and chewing gum, and look like they were last re-habbed in 1985. This one was different.

Their place is apparently bankrolled by some top Internet company-owning folks. It was state-of-the-art and immaculate. Every machine I spied was some high tech prototype that we won’t see on the market until years from now. Like 3D TVs you don’t need to wear special glasses to view. Trippy.

When Nathan turned on the big projectors (see the very first photo in this post), I thought I was gonna get sucked into a Tron-like video game world.

Uh, actually, I did (in a way). And I certainly didn’t want to come back. The world Kid Infinity has constructed is much more fun than the real one…

Nathan and Ryan impressed me right off the bat with their meticulousness. After all, 3D technology is not new. Even the kind that uses polarized glasses (which they will be handing out this weekend at The Smell to all attendees) has been around for awhile.

No, what’s different here is the accuracy of their process, and the sophistication of the application.

Kid Infinity will not just be appearing in three dimensions. They will use rear projection and sophisticated computer animation to interact with immense 3D graphics. They started their creative process by completely sketching and measuring The Smell, and imagining where the audience will stand. With those vantage points calculated in advance, Ryan and Nathan and their helpers will be able to deliver the most flawless, custom 3D experience anyone attending could ever hope to see.

That includes commissioning custom animation from all over the world. Nathan showed me snippets of graphics from artists who would never normally work on a rock show—top shelf moving art that was so sick, I must have looked like an awestruck kid. My jaw was hanging open the whole time.

But it’s not just software/creative stuff that sets the Kid Infinity show apart from the rest. They also purchased some rad custom hardware, like this huge screen which will just about fill the entire area behind the stage at The Smell. These guys thought of everything…

Okay—I’m really not supposed to show you any of Kid Infinity’s cubistic 3D fantasy animation. Like this glimpse (which I shot with a polarized lens on a 2D camera set-up) of a pixelated LAPD helicopter chasing a UFO through a strobing, videogame-like L.A. cityscape. SO FUCKING COOL!