Vitarave007: A case study by New Nostalgia

Vitarave007 was a 3-day camping music and arts festival organized by SF-based collective Vitamin1000. The festival was held deep in the woods of Shasta-Trinity National Forest—an inaugural location compared to previous years in the Mojave Desert. We, New Nostalgia, designed and built the main stage production (lights, lasers, and sound), performed a DJ set, and brought our art installation, HoloDome, to the festival. We dressed in all-white ghillie suits, appearing more as creature than human, extending the mystique and mystery of the forest.

Introduction

In 2025, our consensus reality is chaotic, fractured, and surreal. We live in the age of deepfakes, conspiracy theories, algorithmic echo chambers, and overwhelming information. In finding ways to help people engage with each other and the world meaningfully, we don’t need to fabricate magical worlds or escape rooms—we need to recognize that the real world already is magical, chaotic, and sacred.

Raving is evidence of the underlying magic in our reality. Enigmatic forces are at play, and when conscious of them, mystical synchronicities occur. There is a lack of order—a resistance to formality and institution—that unveils a hidden mystical reality.

We acted as arbiters of upheaval—catalysts for transformation. Our stage production laid the foundation for attendees to inhabit this new world, while our DJ set, HoloDome installation, and all-white ghillie suits embellished the story. The result was grounding in a new, shared narrative and an authentic moment of human passage.

New Nostalgia, July 2025

1. A New Narrative

The original shift towards personalized media—once a response to the uniformity of 1990s media culture—has now fractured our shared narrative, leaving us with infinite feeds and no common story. The narrative fabric holding civilization together has frayed beyond recognition.

Is there a way to bring us back to center— to rebuild our sense of shared reality?

Artist Jeffery Hull, creator of the Jejune Institute and The Latitude Society, argues that the answer lies in gestures toward the mystical, metaphysical, ethereal, and otherworldly.¹ What’s needed now is not more fictional escape—but grounded, transformational experiences that uncover hidden magical fantasies hiding in plain sight.

These experiences don’t need to be rational to be real. What is needed is something felt, something embodied, something that reawakens our capacity for awe, vulnerability, and connection.

“Intellectualizing raving is jobless behavior”

2. Rave Praxis

As contrived as it may seem, this next section will make an attempt to intellectualize raving.

There is an undeniable appeal to a grassroots, unlicensed all-night dance party in the middle of the forest, two hours from the nearest town. Whether it be the temporary autonomy in creating a new pop-up world, the sensory overload from strobes firing, fog hissing, and colorful lasers, or the controlled chaos and anti-structure from society—the rave is a laboratory for freaks, community, and psychic release.

A core fundamental of raving—drug use—can also be intellectualized. Terence McKenna talks about how shamans take psychedelics to discover ways of understanding. Their role in society is to filter and translate it for everyone so that we collectively expand consciousness. The goal—to become more and more conscious generation after generation.³

Through this, raves can be a test bed for new ways of living. Within Vitarave, attendees had the experience of shifting through daily activities of dance instruction, music therapy, psychedelic parties, and a HoloDome baptism. The next morning would be a communal meal with a cleansing creek river bath.

Framing raving as a form of mystical, communal, and embodied ritual is a direct support of Jeff Hull’s intention. The rave becomes a space of freaky behavior, of presence, of collaboration—a place where people re-enter reality not as it’s marketed, but as it’s felt.

3. The Forest

Even in the daylight, it’s easy to get lost in the woods of the foothills of Shasta-Trinity Forest. Each morning would feature a cool mist of fog rolling through the gaps in the trees as the fleeting moments of temporary silence were filled with the murmur of the creek and the whizzing of nitrous cans. By noon, both the music from the main stage and critters of all dimensions would start traveling through the woods.

New Nostalgia helped convert a large steel tractor shed in an open field to be the home of the main stage titled The Club. Across a tiny bridge through campsites was the location of a second, more downtempo stage, Biome. Visual and media artists at the festival built a series of projected and material installations next to a tea tent and drug yurt accompanying the Biome stage.

At the main stage—two 24-watt lasers flanked the interior of a corrugated steel tractor shed that projected over the audience. They projected onto the far trees, illuminating them as if the trees were being rendered into reality, atom by atom. A series of lights were placed as leveled arrays to highlight the dramatic height of the shed.

Our DJ set leveraged the maximum potential of the lighting production. We unveiled the two lasers through a dramatic, cinematic 10-minute intro. Playing with the concept of browsing between Netflix shows—the set featured three distinct acts, progressively getting more unhinged with accompanying music and lighting aesthetics.

Saturday afternoon, a large geometric wooden dome became the venue for a pop-up creek party. Inside, different DJs played an assortment of daytime house, bloghouse, and global bass music, while festival-goers enjoyed coffee, watermelon, beer, and sunbathing in the creek.

After dark, the very same dome became our HoloDome installation. At 2AM in our white ghillie suits, we draped a translucent parachute over the frame, installed four light bars plus a fog machine and ignited a sequence of bright, flashing colors that drew a line of awestruck wanderers. The site transformation proved both the power of instant myth-making and the portability of our setup.

4. Lemurians

Documented in Oliver’s A Dweller on Two Planets, hidden deep within the core of Mount Shasta through a system of complex tunnels, lies a secret civilization of survivors from the ancient civilization of Lemuria. This city in Shasta, known as Telos: City of Light, boasts fur-lined carpeted floors and jeweled walls—signs of opulence. Lemurians are known to emerge in the woods of Shasta, walking the surface dressed in all-white robes.⁴

Photo evidence of Lemurians has yet to surface, but during Vitarave people witnessed firsthand a group of white-robed Lemurians DJ and perform lights and lasers. Is this a manifestation of a magical fantasy, or our own immersive non-fiction?

Hull suggests that artists are no longer just creators of worlds—they must become stewards of thresholds: people who design the conditions for others to move through uncertainty, ambiguity, grief, and beauty into something new. Stewards who show evidence of magic and mysticism in their world. Not just to be dazzled, but to be changed.

Our work was just one small part of the effort. Building Vitarave was the opposite of spontaneous organization—it was a labor of love, organization, and coordination across an orchestra of responsibilities. Large praise and credit is due to the entire team of builders and organizers who allowed for magic to exist and for us to change alongside it.

Technical Overview

This document outlines the technical setup behind the Vitarave007 main stage and the HoloDome3 installation.

1. Main Stage

Lighting and Lasers
1× Chauvet EZpar 64 RGBA
1× Fog Machine
1× Rockville Rockforce 192 DMX Controller

Sound
2× Danley SM60 (tops)
2× Danley TH118XL (subs)
1× Danley 20k4 Amplifier
2× Tannoy VSX 218DR (subs)
1× Powersoft T902A Amplifier

Fog & Haze
1× Chauvet Hurricane Haze 3D
1× Chauvet Hurricane Haze 4D
1× Chauvet Hurricane 1800 Fog Machine
1× Generic Fog Machine
1× Generic Hazer

Power
2× Go Grid Systems EG4 18kPV (battery system)
2× Go Grid Systems EG4 6000XP Inverter
2× Honda EU2200i Generators
1× Ryobi 4000 Generator

Software
Pangolin Beyond (laser control)
ArmoniaPlus System Design (sound system tuning and management)

The DJ booth was set up in front of a large existing shed on the property. All available lighting, laser, sound, and fog equipment was installed in and around the structure. Power was distributed across both battery and generator systems to accommodate the full AV setup.

2. HoloDome3

Hardware
4× Rockville Battery Strip 24
1× Fog Machine
1× Enttec Open DMX USB Interface
1× Honda EU2200i Generator
1× Parachute (used as a dome covering)
15× Carabiners (for parachute rigging)

Software
Ableton Live Suite
Max for Live
QLC+ (DMX control software)

HoloDome3 utilized an existing dome frame on-site, with a parachute secured over the structure to contain fog. Rockville Battery Strip lights were mounted horizontally at eye level along the dome’s beams. Lighting and fog effects were controlled through QLC+ via an Enttec Open DMX USB, with a programmed sequence created in Ableton Live using Max for Live.

Citations

1. 1 Hull, J. (2023, July 19). An elegy for immersive. Medium. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
2. 2 gabber b*tch 69 [@gabberbitch69]. (2024, July 1). intellectualizing raving is jobless behavior [Tweet]. X. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
3. 3 McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the gods: The search for the original tree of knowledge — A radical history of plants, drugs, and human evolution. Bantam Books.
4. 4 Oliver, F. S. (1905). A Dweller on Two Planets; or, The Dividing of the Way. Baumgardt Publishing Company.

Published by

Group:

New Nostalgia

Editors:

Aakash Malhotra, Brendan Luu

Writers:

Aakash Malhotra, Jordan Ponciano

Graphic design:

Brendan Luu

Printing:

New Nostalgia, or you

Production by

Technical direction:

Jordan Ponciano

Stage riggers:

Justice Park, Jordan Ponciano, Brendan Luu

Lighting technicians:

Brendan Luu, Karla Limon, Justice Park, Fernan Lukban

Audio production:

Jordan Ponciano, Morgan Law, Benji Fales

Event coordinators:

Juliette Mohr, Jessica Yeung

Production members:

Josh Cohen, Julian Pelzner, Phillip Boureston

© 2025 by New Nostalgia

Created in San Francisco, CA, USA

All rights reserved

First edition, July 2025