This is Social Studies. Where Creative technologists, new media’s moguls, underground musicians, established photographers, patrons of the arts (and others) contribute to what we hope will grow into an archive of the times. We believe written media is a portal to the soul, for both the reader and the writer. Expect deep convictions, personal manifestos, industry critiques and worldview fascinations and romanticizations. Without further ado,

Here’s New York’s own, Matt Rowean

If you’re reading this, it’s safe to say you have some love for human connection. After all, its a joint post from two entities grounded in creating social moments and connecting people: 3rd Space and my business, MATTE. We aim to leave marks on your life through experiences, primarily in the fields of art and music. In 13+ years of operating, we’ve never stopped betting on our own events, on our power to bring people together.

Over those years, I’ve seen enough of this industry to know that technology is shaping not just a thirst for real connection but pushing what a real-world experience can be. And, while tech dominates our timelines and newsfeeds — changing industries, reshaping social interactions, creating hyper-connection and alienation at the same time — a parallel narrative has emerged: IRL can be the counterweight, even the salvation, for the tech-induced loneliness epidemic.

The Explosion of Experiential

There’s been a lot said about the so-called decline of nightlife: clubs shutting down, Gen Z drinking less and dating less, a general decline of vibrancy in the social scene. As the New York Times surmised in April 2025, “The Rent Is High, and the Alcohol Isn’t Flowing.”

Three months after the Times story, I penned “How We Go Out Now.” It was an extensive look at how people go out now versus how we went out in the aughts I reveled in. It was also an exploration of my deep-seated belief that, more than ever, people want to congregate and connect.

“I go out less, but the scene I’ve encountered tells a different story,” I wrote at the time. “New York still pops off.”

Subscribe now

Instead of asking if and how nightlife died or was dying, I asked what changed in the last 20 years, what’s actually replacing former iterations of nightlife, and where people are connecting today.

TLDR: the kids are alright. Still partying, just differently.

Also verifiable: ‘experiential‘ is now an explosive industry, fragmenting into many tiers and genres. You see it in the budget allocations from brands (at MATTE, experiential RFPs have grown to more than 60% of our business) and in the volume and scale of events.

The business is global and there are major events every week: Coachella, F1, art weeks, design weeks, film festivals evolving into broader festivals (see Tribeca), All-Star Weekends, awards season. Just go on BFA and you’ll get a sense of how big the experiential industry has become and how keen we all are to hedge against automation.

With brands investing so heavily to reach you IRL, VC’s are following the money. Concerts and festivals have hit at all-time highs in attendance and cost. My timeline is flooded with people analyzing brand activations or Anthropic’s open call for an Events Lead at $400K, so-called marketing experts ironically spewing AI-written breakdowns of why this foretells experiential marketing as the next trillion-dollar space.

They might be writing with AI, but they’re not wrong. Experiential and event marketing is growing at a 5.92% clip, the fastest rate of any service category in US marketing agencies. Moreover, 74% of Fortune 1,000 brands planned to raise their experiential budgets in 2026 from 2025 levels. These are strong indications of how heavily experience weighs in the marketer’s playbook.

My thesis is that AI will streamline traditional marketing, especially content, and emphasize a new way of human-first brand building through culture, community, and offline experiences. In effect, the money will shift further. And as it gets cheaper to produce content, we’ll see even more investment in IRL, aka experiential.

Dating apps, TikTok, Zoom calls, doomscrolling, and a constant bombardment of information have over-stimulated us, and the antidote is human connection. But people have ALWAYS wanted to be together; forces drove that apart. In the 20 years I’ve spent in New York adjacent to nightlife, hospitality, and events, there’s never been a shortage of lust for a great experience.

And yet, I never imagined that the biggest catalyst for growth in live events would be the unforeseen effects of technology.

Of course, tech is a double-edged sword. On one end you have social media, phones with cameras and lots of other detriments. But then, on the other, you have softwares like TouchDesigner, with which we can create stunning visuals, customize spatial audio, and produce tech-enabled stage designs that would melt our parents’ minds. So,

Can Technology Improve IRL?

In 2019, Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty show did something that felt revolutionary: they took people’s phones, cut social coverage, and created a singular, momentary presence. The tech used to power down the phones was Yondr, an early-stage company that later became a darling.

^{(MATTE’s 2018 Fashion Week Savage x Fenty Film)}

RiRi was early to understand the effect technology was having on presence, so she flipped it into a press moment (the show was captured professionally and streamed as a full theatrical production on Amazon Prime about ten days later) and an experience unto itself.

And if you don’t believe that matters, look at trending videos comparing Ibiza 2000 to 2026. The change is stark. And sad.

Social media has turned the experience itself into a projection of “I’m here.” I’ve noticed it at least twice in the past six months.

First, the final night of LCD Soundsystem’s residency at Knockdown Center last December. The thing that stood out most: no one was holding a phone up, so much so that you’d have felt like an asshole to do so. Everyone was dancing, and I couldn’t help correlating that with the fact that the audience was markedly over 35. It’s like going to a club in Berlin; you pull your phone out and it’s verboten. The fact that people can refrain in 2026 stands as proof that it is possible to be present, but doing so takes a markedly different mindset than what so many in their 20s and 30s have adopted — it’s about being there.

And then there’s Coachella.

I was there for Skylrk’s activations (we’ve been working with them for two years now) and JB’s Super Bowl moment. It had been ten years since I’d been to the festival, and I was struck by the absolute WALL of phones everywhere.

It was at its worst when Sabrina Carpenter brought out Madonna to a crowd so absorbed with recording that there was hardly any reaction. Zombie crowds have gotten so bad, which is why I think we’ll see more artists banning phones.

Harry Styles did. For his recent one-night-only Manchester gig, he handed out 20,000 disposable cameras at the door. The no-phone policy turned out to be the most praised part of the night: over 700,000 people applied for the subsidized £20 tickets, Rolling Stone called the show a “blowout dance party,” and the full performance landed globally on Netflix two days later.

Doing it Right

There are areas where tech is enhancing and showing up as it should, adding to the moment, blowing your mind. Imagine if the Imagineers built a nightclub. What would it look and feel like?

Tupac as a hologram at Coachella in 2012 leveraged a 19th-century theatrical illusion called “Pepper’s Ghost,” cost somewhere between $100K and $400K, and spiked Tupac’s sales (Hail Mar jumped 1,530% ) in the weeks following the festival.

More recently, take Jim Dolan’s bet on the Sphere. He spent over $2.3 billion building it — the most technologically powerful live experience ever constructed, a monolith to draw you in with its sheer scale. The project took commitment. People doubted a 366-foot LED bauble would draw crowds or legitimate acts, and at first they were right. Through 2024, Sphere Entertainment posted an operating loss of $200 million, SPHR stock got cut 70%, and the calendar beyond U2 looked thin.

Then people started talking about the experience. How unlike anything else it was, a canvas that can change dramatically based on the talent or IP.

Bands saw U2 and wanted to create their own version. A year later, the lineup is STACKED. SPHR stock is up roughly 370% off its 2025 low and the Sphere generated $420 million in ticket sales from 1.3 million tickets last year, more than any single venue on Earth. It was also the highest annual gross in Billboard Boxscore’s 50-year history.

Dolan brought forth a new category of venue and will now expand globally. There is, unequivocally, an appetite for grand spectacles like his.

On a smaller scale, MATTE made a similar bet. After decades of producing events in other venues, we decided to design something from the ground up with our own learnings; we spent a year building out HERO, a former post office located beneath the ice rink at Rockefeller Center.

We looked at modularity, the ability to create zones and journeys within a single space. We installed 100-foot LED walls and ceilings where we could showcase the best visual effects. These stage graphics and animations have been one of my favorite types of projects, creating aesthetic journeys paired with music. Sound itself is critical. We partnered with BOSE, building one of the only spatial audio systems in NYC. In HERO, it comes at you from every direction, rather than left and right, much like in Sphere.

Leave a comment

The space has become our R&D lab for ideas. We’ve launched IP, or partnered with labels to create album experiences for artists like The Weeknd, Cardi B, and Rosalía. We currently have a partnership with D’strist on ReSOUND, a site-specific multi-sensory art exhibition that runs through the fall. I can’t wait to share what’s coming for the holidays.

The Future of Experiential Marketing

In the future, experiential marketing will be owned by those who can merge new tech with craft AND maintain their connections to culture. Bring mind-blowing things to the world, yes, but make sure the crowd is interesting, that every hospitality touchpoint is considered, that people leave with a cohesively positive, memorable experience.

Fred Again’s USB tour is proof subtle tech works when the audience buys in. The tour crushed, first and foremost, because of the energy of the crowds. The spatial design was a deliberate move away from frenetic LED graphics, and his partnership with Boris Acket on a kinetic fabric canopy was a prime example of how the electronic music space can evolve beyond its over-reliance on screens and lasers.

There IS tech here. Real-time physics are in play with 1,200 square meters of fabric and 84 custom winches breathing above the crowd. The canopy reacts to the music, but it feels ORGANIC.

Share

One beautiful thing stands out when you look at photos or films from the USB tour: no phones, just people bringing their best energy to the dance floor.

This is Social Studies. Where Creative technologists, new media’s moguls, underground musicians, established photographers, patrons of the arts (and others) contribute to what we hope will grow into an archive of the times. We believe written media is a portal to the soul, for both the reader and the writer. Expect deep convictions, personal manifestos, industry critiques and worldview fascinations and romanticizations. Without further ado,

Here’s Minnesota’s own, Noah Berghammer

When I moved to New York four years ago, everyone told me the city was dead. I was 22, from the Midwest, and didn’t believe them. I still don’t. I moved here the way you move somewhere when it’s been calling so loud that you can’t hear anything else; I had no job, no lease, no real connections, just a vigor and a faith in God that it would all work out. And mostly, it has. But something is a bit broken here. I spent time searching for the solution. Now I’m steadily building it.

The problem is not the city. The artists are still here; the buzz is still here. I felt it at the Bowery Ballroom in the summer of 2023 when The Telescreens and Sid Simons played for a sold-out room full of indie kids; when more lighters than phones came out in the dark. And, I felt it last weekend when 500 people packed into my gallery and flooded out onto Hester Street. The culture is not dead. But the ecosystem that used to sustain it is fracturing, and it’s proving difficult to maintain a creative dream in THE city for pursuing something of the sorts.

Subscribe now

The Fracture

Downtown Manhattan in the 1970s and ‘80s (yes, I’m going there) ran on a parallel economy, not just a financial one. Midtown ran on money, while Downtown ran on social currency. Cool actually meant something then, and money alone couldn’t get you into every room like it can today.

Take Sam Wagstaff. He was old money New York, a real blue blood. He met a young photographer from Queens named Robert Mapplethorpe in 1972, and what followed was one of the most consequential patron relationships in American art history. Wagstaff went through a personal transformation, from a conservative, uptown prep kid to a downtown regular, giving into the progressive lifestyle of the times. He bought Mapplethorpe a loft on Bond Street, a Hasselblad camera, and access to every room that mattered. In exchange, he got what money couldn’t manufacture: proximity to the real thing — the artist and the art. His story is the precipice of what I’m talking about.

As his biographer Philip Gefter wrote in Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, “Because [Wagstaff] was a patrician and knew very wealthy philanthropists, he could, by virtue of having a conversation with somebody, have them open a checkbook and buy ten photographs by this young artist named Robert Mapplethorpe.” The transaction moved in both directions. That was the point of the relationship.

This arrangement wasn’t even uniquely New York. In the early 1990s, John Galliano — already considered a generational talent by everyone who mattered in fashion — was living in a tiny Paris atelier, yet couldn’t even pay to put out a new collection or stage a show. He had the vision and he had the work; what he didn’t have was money or resources. The journalist at Condé Naste André Leon Talley publicly hailed him an “endangered species,” and in came Anna Wintour. Subsequently, a socialite named São Schlumberger lent her 18th century mansion. Galliano filled it with dead leaves and dry ice, secured the backing, staged the show, and within two years was appointed to Dior — becoming the first British designer ever to head a French haute couture house.

Remove any single person in that chain — Talley, Wintour, Schlumberger — and that version of Galliano likely never emerges. The talent was always there, but to flourish, it needed access, resources, people with vested interest. That’s where things differ, even today: in Europe, people value art and culture in a way that feels integral to their history and the function of their society; in America the conversation often turns to money, not taste.

Back stateside, Basquiat had his own ecosystem operating in the same mold. Annina Nosei gave him the basement of her SoHo gallery as a studio; Gagosian had him living in his house in LA before a solo show. These patrons weren’t writing checks from a distance, they embedded themselves in the life of the artist because that was the only way to acquire the thing they actually wanted: a seat at the table and access to the places where the culture was being made.

And Basquiat, for his part, was notorious for selling directly out of his studio to anyone who showed up with cash and the right attitude. That’s the part people forget: the right attitude was the true price of admission. Again, money alone wasn’t enough. You had to show up, to be part of the world.

Tipping Point

In the early 1980s, Frank DiGiacomo wrote in Vanity Fair that it was, “An age of neon excess in art and commerce in Lower Manhattan.” And The Odeon was where it was all negotiated. Keith McNally and then wife, Lynn Wagenknecht, opened the bistro in Tribeca in 1980 in a neighborhood so dark the Twin Towers provided most of the light. It “Filled up with local artists and writers first, and then quickly attracted uptown types who hoped to hobnob with the young glitterati,” DiGiacomo wrote.

That’s how it always worked: it started with the creatives, then everyone else followed. McNally said it himself, writing in the same VF piece that The Odeon was meant to be, “A place where businessmen and starving artists could come and be together.” As Tom Wolfe, also quoted in the piece, put it, “Everyone who wanted to be where things were happening, as the phrase goes, was coming in.”

This was a space to facilitate the transaction, but spaces like that don’t exist anymore. That’s what’s broken.

Writer Jerry Saltz watched it break in real time. “For nearly ten years, starting in the late ‘90s,” Saltz wrote in Artnet Magazine, “Art and money had sex in public. Lots of it. And really publicly. Art became news. Prices were equated with artistic value. The highest sellers were seen as the best artists. Galleries got bigger, then became multinational.” The creative economy became a financial one and the intimate ecosystem of old Downtown went with it.

Then came the rise and fall of Vice. Disney, TPG, George Soros and the Murdoch family poured $1.6 billion into a company built on the promise of cultural access. Vice peaked at a $5.7 billion valuation in 2017 and filed for bankruptcy in 2023. The suits wanted what the money men of the 80s always wanted: access to culture and the feeling of cool. The difference is that, in 1982, buying that access required actually funding the culture that was producing it, not just participating in its upside.

Subscribe now

What finished the job was social media (and I’m not even a hater of social media; it’s good for so many things). However, before, the scene had to be physically attended. You couldn’t perform “downtown” from your phone. Showing up was the point — it was the cost of admission and the product itself. Now, the Goldman banker can signal some semblance of cultural fluency without ever setting foot below 14th street. He listens to the Throwing Fits podcast, attends the right restaurants (the ones he sees on TikTok), and gets the same dopamine hit New Yorkers walking into The Odeon in 1982 got. He does it all without actually finding something, loving something, and most importantly, investing in something. He isn’t adjacent to anything. He’s watching a curated simulation of a scene while the scene itself quietly starves.

When that physical obligation dissolved, so too did the economic relationship that sustained everything around it. You don’t need to buy a Lorenzo Amos to prove you have taste when you can repost it on Instagram for free. You don’t need to fund the gallery to get the invite — the invite is now just a story on someone’s feed.

Rebuilding

That brings us to today. An inflection point for me, personally.

My business partner Lane Kimbro and I opened PRIV.Y, a gallery and production company on Hester Street, in 2024. Lane was still at Goldman Sachs at the time. I’d been working in fashion and making things, but I’d also been to business school. I understood that money talked, and I never believed in the artist-as-purist mythology. Rent isn’t cheap. Food isn’t cheap. You can’t live in the Chelsea Hotel on napkin sketches anymore, and pretending otherwise is a fantasy that only people who’ve never had to make rent can afford.

Last week, we had 500 people at a gallery opening and not a single sale; not even an inquiry, This happens more often than not. Luckily, the production company runs at a profit, and that profit is what keeps the gallery lights on. We subsidize the culture ourselves because the alternative is a New York where the galleries close and the artists leave. But I refuse to believe that it has to be this way.

And yet, there is a specific and modern absurdity to 500 people gathering for the sake of art and not a single person reaching for their wallet. This is something Lane and I think about all the time. We want to continue to create a space for artists to show their work and to bring like-minded people together, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that most of our community isn’t buying art; they can’t afford to. And there’s the disconnect once again.

So, how do we find longevity here?

What this city needs, and honestly, what every city with a financial center and a creative class needs, is a new generation of artist patrons. Young collectors. Money people willing to walk into a space on Hester Street or in Bushwick and say: I want to be part of this. Not through my phone, or an algorithm, but physically. In the room. With skin in the game.

Leave a comment

The 32-year-old banker making $600,000+ a year has no idea where to find culture beyond his phone because nobody has made the case to him that what’s actually missing from his life is that painting on his wall, which he bought from someone he actually met, in a room he walked into, in a neighborhood he sought out. That act of collecting, of patronizing, of putting real money behind something uncertain and alive and not yet validated by an auction house or an algorithm is the only way artists will be able to survive in a city like this.

The work is still being made. The artists are still here, trust me I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it. It just needs more people who are willing to invest in what they’re already showing up for.

People like KidSuper. At his “The People’s Runway,” he fooled the CFDA and all the press outlets into thinking he was showing a new collection during NYFW, when in fact, he had simply funded a group of young designers to show their collections on a massive stage in front of the fashion industry. Or Jake Sacks’ 3rd Space dinner party series, where he brings creatives, entrepreneurs, and big thinkers together in one room to eat, drink wine, and share ideas. Or Serving The People, a non-profit organization founded by Lucien Smith and run by myself and Maya Ribeiro. We host weekly in-person meetings in New York, LA, London, Paris, Milan, and Phoenix, discuss our practice, ask for advice, host shows and lectures, and provide support and infrastructure to a large group of artists across all different ages and all different mediums.

Share

There are people and communities, actually finding success. That should give us all hope.