This New Immersive Experience Is Built With Hundreds of Photos, Videos and Magazine Covers From the ‘Rolling Stone’ Archives
Narrated by Kevin Bacon, the 50-minute exhibition examines the history of rock music through media projected onto walls across a 4,000-square-foot gallery
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Rolling Stone magazine has turned its vast library of rock-related media into an immersive exhibition. The experience features more than 1,000 images, 200 videos and 1,300 magazine covers, projected at larger-than-life scale onto walls.
Titled “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, the Immersive Rock Experience,” the show opened in Las Vegas and has since traveled to New York and Houston, where it’s now on display at Artechouse’s 4,000-square-foot gallery, per the Houston Press’ Bob Ruggiero.
The 50-minute immersive exhibition, narrated by actor Kevin Bacon, features more than 300 musicians from throughout the magazine’s nearly 60-year history, including Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen. As Rolling Stone’s John Lonsdale writes, “Amplified” is “like a hypnotic rock show, complete with everything from 4K laser projections to a three-dimensional audio soundtrack.”
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“I just wanted to evoke the same feeling you get when you listen to a record for the first time,” Jodi Peckman, the executive producer of “Amplified,” tells CBS New York’s Kristie Keleshian.
Peckman worked at the magazine for most of her career. As she explains to Rolling Stone, “Music imagery is about experiences. It’s about the unbridled joy of concerts and our connection to our favorite artists. Every picture tells a story, and ‘Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified’ has hundreds of stories to tell.”
The show is divided into several chapters: According to Artnet’s Min Chen, it begins with sections called “Backstage” and “The Band,” which bring visitors into the pre-concert rituals of stars like David Bowie. “Fans” highlights the people in the crowds, like the adoring teenage girls behind Beatlemania. “Studio” and “The Message” focus on the processes of songwriting, while “Cars” and “Hair” are tributes to the trappings of celebrity.
In the 58 years that Rolling Stone has been in print, the magazine has amassed a vast collection of music-related photos and videos. Research and editing for the exhibition took about two years, as Joe Levy, the music director of “Amplified” and former music editor of Rolling Stone, tells Artnet. The magazine has some 60,000 photographs in its archives, many shot by renowned photographers like Lynn Goldsmith and Mark Seliger.
“To be able to deliver these photos 40 feet high, bigger than the actual event, is to really communicate the power of the photograph and put you in that moment,” Levy adds. “If you have them in a magazine, if you have them on your computer, they’re powerful. But the difference between having them on your phone in the palm of your hand and having it surround you is indescribable.”
The rock genre grew out of rhythm and blues, played mostly by Black Americans, and its popularity took off in the 1950s. While much of “Amplified” is devoted to the late 20th century, it also ventures into modern hip-hop and pop, showing how rock influenced other genres, as well as American culture as a whole.
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“I’ve watched it so many times, and it takes me to that roller coaster of memories,” Sandro Kereselidze, co-founder of Artechouse, says to the Houston Press. “And what’s beautiful about it is that this is real American culture.”
Levy sees the exhibition as an extension of Rolling Stone’s mission. As he tells Artnet, “This is just another way to reach out to fans—whoever they’re fans of, no matter how old they are—to bring them into the experience of music.”
“Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” is on view at Artechouse in Houston through August 31.
