The Tech-Art-IRL Love Triangle, by Matt Rowean
Spacial design, zombie crowds, and the market for experiential
Matt cofounded MATTE Projects, where he now sits as a partner and Chief Creative Officer. They’re a category leader in the production of experiences. They’ve worked with clients including Disney, Apple, Bose, The Macallan, Cartier, Ritz-Carlton and The Weeknd. Most recently competing Skylrks whole Coachella campaign. Working at Matte is said to be a bootcamp for any young designer or event producer in NYC, and coming out of Matte after a 1-2 year stint often places you in a dream role. Their alumni network is competitive with the best, Matt is best known for his taste when it comes to hiring and betting on emerging talent.
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.”
Imagine if the Imagineers built a nightclub. What would it look and feel like?
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.”
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.
The kids are alright. Still partying, just differently.
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.
My timeline is flooded with people analyzing brand activations or Anthropic’s open call for an Events Lead at $400K.
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.
About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in ‘23, I thought, ‘We have to do this, it’s completely uncharted territory!’
— Lars Ulrich, Metallica drummer, per Guitar World
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.
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.
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.
 | A guest post by
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The future isn’t less technology, it’s better technology that makes you forget it’s there.
"74% of Fortune 1,000 brands planned to raise their experiential budgets in 2026 from 2025 levels" — woah. great shout re: budgets shifting to experiential as digital becomes cheaper to produce. & now that you say it, it almost sounds obvious.