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Format Festival 2022: A Mind-Bending Music, Art, and Technology Experience [Photos & Review]

From Phoenix to Fat Boy Slim to art instalments and more music, Format Festival 2022 was a mind-bending Music, Art, and Technology experience. Check out Patrick Quiring’s coverage.

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“Am I dreaming?”

This question crossed my mind frequently as I wandered through C3’s newest event, Format Festival. C3 are no spring chickens when it comes to festivals as they are behind some of the biggest music gatherings around (ACL and Lollapalooza being some of their biggest), so my excitement was at an 11 to see what they could have cooked up when entering FF.

Truly my expectations were met and exceeded a thousand times over. Before entering the festival, the only thing I knew about it was that it was in the town that Walmart calls home, some fantastic bands were playing, and that it was going to be where art and music collided.

Those things did transpire, but it was so much more.

First off, it’s a festival where you have to park somewhere else off-site and get bussed in. I’ve never really been to a festival that does that, so that was interesting. I was kind of annoyed at first by it, but now looking back on it, I could see why that was a thing. It gave the festival a sense of “destination,” as if I was arriving somewhere unique and off the beaten path.

I sadly could only attend the Friday night partition of the festival, so I only have that experience to recall, but it was a truly memorable experience, to say the least.

I arrived just in time to see the amazing band Phoenix perform, and they played all of their hits which was a great way to get the weekend going. Halfway through their set, they had an art display in the sky by a huge amount of drones. Phoenix has some instrumental songs, so the drones performed during that time, and it was a truly breathtaking experience. Then there were these people dressed in furry art piece monster costumes that came out at the end of their set that danced around. I can’t remember what they were called, but apparently, they were a thing that would pop around the festival and perform throughout the weekend. They are the brainchild of the artist known as Nick Cave, and they made the festival quite unique.

After Phoenix wrapped up their phenomenal set, I explored the festival. The first thing that caught my eye was the humongous three-story building known as “The Cube.” It felt like something that was out of a ’90s rave warehouse. It was also really cool that it was made out of shear fabric so you could see the people standing on each of the three stories. They had lasers, fog, and some amazing trance music playing on the inside.

After hanging out there for a bit, I decided to walk down a little farther, and I ended up at a cliche huge red barn with music thumping from the inside and a huge amount of people waiting outside to get in. I finally get there and look in to see what all of the fuss was about, and it was the legendary Fat Boy Slim making the people dance with his fantastic songs.

After spending quite a while in there navigating the sweaty bodies and catchy tunes, I headed towards the last bit of the festival that I hadn’t explored yet, which was this weirdly awesome rave in the forest. To get there, I had to go through this gigantic ring of air mist that was lit up, so it looked like I was going through a tunnel that was out of some sci-fi movie. In this first rave, there was this art piece that was in the shape of an animal where the DJs played out of its mouth. A disco ball was a great provider of light in this area, and it was just a very trippy place. Very enjoyable and super cool, but trippy at that.

After spending some more time there, I decided to head out as it was around 1 am, and I had to head back to Tulsa, which was an hour and a half away.

I sadly could only attend Friday night, but let me tell you, this was an EXPERIENCE! I felt like I was transported to an artist’s dream. I only truly scratched the surface of what I experienced and felt that night, and if I would have given a full recap, then this review would be much, much longer.

Bottom line is you have to go to next year’s Format festival. I’ve been to many different festivals this year, and this is by far my favourite festival because the experience is that far out there.

If you do, you definitely won’t regret it, and I know I will definitely be back there next year, and hopefully experiencing all three days of this incredible mind-bending festival.

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