Stage One was our first foray into stage design and the project upon which The Paranormal Unicorn was founded. It was conceived and built by the three founding members of TPU: Stefan Yazzie Herbert, Benjamin Frener and Philipp Gantioler. Benni, a carpenter by trade, originally came up with the concept of differently sized LED cubes stacked on top of each other. He went to Stefan, who was studying digital art at the time, and together they came up with a 3D render.
The construction took Benni and Philipp roughly three months, always working after hours and during vacation time. The programming and electronics were a game of trial and error, seeing as this was our very first project of this nature, yet we endured. Conception began in October and it took about 4 months until completion.
After we released a promo video of the stage, people quickly became interested and we were able to play at parties and with artists we had never dreamed of before, including Netsky, DJ Hell and Richie Hawtin at the Urban Art Forms, Poolbar and Freakwave Festival.
Sadly, after twelve good shows, Stage One was destroyed on May 16th 2013. RIP
