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HAZFEST Virtual Festival an Aus First
Restrictions on gatherings? A Hobart teenager decided to make an entire music festival in a virtual world. HAZFEST here we come!
From his bedroom during coronavirus, a Hobart teenager has created an exciting virtual music festival set for this coming weekend.
Seventeen-year-old Elliott Law, who is producing and directing the music festival, said the HAZFEST project idea came from seeing the recent coronavirus crisis emerge and its subsequent devastating effect on performing arts.
Elliott Law.
“I thought, ‘Why not have a virtual music festival?'” he said. “I saw COVID-19 completely shut down the arts and entertainment industry, watched a well known dubstep music record label called Disciple host a massive Minecraft festival. I got really inspired by those things and the lack of live music going on in real life and so I started work on this amazing project, HAZFEST.”
He chose the name HAZFEST based on his own stage name Hazchem and “the hazardous world we now find ourselves in.”
The virtual music festival will be hosted on the platform of online game Minecraft.
Elliott Law said: “Friends have helped me build an amazing festival world on Minecraft based on fantastic Tasmanian festivals I’ve been to like Falls and Panama. I chose Minecraft as the platform to hold our festival because it’s super creative and fun! The festival is hosted on the ‘Bedrock Edition’ of Minecraft.”
Aerial view of the festival grounds.
The HAZFEST Festival Grounds are in a fully custom-built world free to access for anyone who joins via Minecraft. It has two music performance stages with their own lighting-systems, a backstage and VIP area ($5 ticket), places to explore like a food market, campsite, blimp with a parkour course inside, forests, treasure hunt and much more.
Building this huge alternative festival space has already been a positive and creative experience for the group of Hobart teenagers.
Law said the festival has been in development since March. “We have had about ten people working on this project over the duration of the project,” he explained. “We have had builders designing and constructing the festival grounds or the world, tech guys working on programming and streaming/video&audio and management guys getting us out there.”
He is hoping to make this a reoccurring event even after COVID-19.
“We’ll take the feedback and experience we’ve gained from this first HAZFEST and make it bigger and better.”
Law has been doing professional audio and music related work for over 2 and a half years working on projects with a wide range of people. The talented youngster has been releasing his own music for over 3 years under his stage name HAZCHEM, is an audio and lighting technician, teach Ableton Live on the side, writes music including for film as well as doing a large amount of post audio work.
HAZFEST details
The Tasmanian line-up includes some well known and emerging performers in a wide variety of music genres – most particularly electronic dance. Performers include Aria award winner Monique Brumby, Hugo Bladel, ZIOS, Out of Context (OOC) and Hazchem.
When: Friday 24 July, 5 – 10pm; Saturday 25 July, 3 – 10pm
Website: https://hazchemsound.
HAZFEST is supported by Hobart City Council and SoHo Living Arts.