What is Do LaB?: The team behind the world’s wildest stages
Every year, around the same time, your phone is inundated with videos and pictures of famous folks and popular people posing at some music festival you publicly hate (but secretly want to go to). It’s the same photos with different people with the same plastic surgery. But ignore those people for a second; what is that behind them? Giant mushrooms? A kaiju-size beetle? In the background, inspiring those “should have been here!” photos, are magnificent works of art: the Do LaB stages.
What started out as a couple of brothers planning a birthday party evolved into a 20-year-old independent business that has become a cultural staple at music festivals around the world. Formed by Jesse, Josh, and Dede Flemming, the Pennsylvania-born brothers first organized the Lightning in a Bottle festival as a wild birthday party for their brother Josh.
After several more years of building art installations at parties and smaller events, the brothers officially created the Do LaB business as a way of organizing their work and projects. In 2005, the brothers were invited to build an art installation for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and they’ve been there ever since.
Photo Taken by Unknown
Their most ambitious work though, is at their yearly festival, Lightning in a Bottle. The Do Lab studio is responsible for organizing the event and creating all of the out-of-this-world visual experiences, like the stages, installations, and floats. Arguably their most famous structure, the giant mushrooms, has been a staple at Coachella as well as Lightning in a Bottle.
According to an interview with FLAUNT magazine, Josh is credited with designing and engineering most of their projects. “[Josh] designs all of our structures and most of our installations,” his brother Jesse said. “He really understands–his brain just understands how tension and engineering and different forces, closing forces work. It's pretty crazy what you can do.”
Photo Taken by Unknown
Photo Taken by Unknown
Lightning in a Bottle returns to Buena Vista Lake this Memorial Day weekend, May 21- May 25.
