The thinking behind Gatekeeper
Gatekeeper began as dirt.
Before there was a stage, there was a site to mark out: shade poles, scaffold jacks, shipping containers, PA positions, performer platforms, sightlines and the footprint of a monumental jaguar head that did not yet exist.
I created Gatekeeper as a large-scale festival altar: a jaguar deity suspended between ancient iconography, psychedelic architecture and technical sheet-metal construction.
The heart of the build was not scenic decoration. It was a precision sheet-metal system.
The jaguar head was designed as a system of cylindrical and conically curved surfaces, cut from upcycled real-estate signs. Each flat pattern was projected, marked out, cut, drilled and tabbed, then offered up to its neighbouring parts.
Once the curve was initiated correctly, the geometry pulled itself into alignment. Know the peak, know the valley, and the flat sheet willingly formed into the undulating skin.
That was the alchemy of the piece.
The DJ booth was set inside the jaguar’s mouth, with an integrated LED wall framing them from behind and filling the visual centre of the stage.
From inside the beast, DJs performed between the teeth, surrounded by the raw collage of the jaguar’s source material: sold signs, commercial real-estate copy and fragments of agent portraits hidden inside the skin.
The projection mapping was developed from the 3D model, with custom video assets built around the known geometry and projector positions. Because the projector rigging had been designed into the shade-pole structure, the base map landed with only minor on-site warping required—cleanly hitting the teeth and surrounding surfaces without spilling across the DJ decks.
Lasers extended the world outward, including a beam placed through a narrow slit cut into the jaguar’s third eye. Aerial performers activated the PA towers and shipping-container paw structures, expanding the stage beyond the head into a full performance environment.
Gatekeeper worked because the mythic form and the technical system were the same thing.
The jaguar was not applied to the stage.
The jaguar was the stage.
Experience Breakdown
- Created and led the design and technical delivery of a monumental jaguar-head main stage.
- Developed the stage from bare site set-out through scaffold, shipping containers, performer platforms and final scenic integration.
- Designed a 10 m+ jaguar head as the central architectural and symbolic form of the stage.
- Created 222 unique developable sheet-metal panels from upcycled real-estate signs.
- Used surface modelling, cylindrical and conical development, projection mark-out, drilling, tabs and fastening logic to transform flat sheets into undulating skin.
- Integrated the DJ booth and LED wall inside the jaguar’s mouth as the central performance focal point.
- Developed projection mapping from the 3D model, known geometry and planned projector locations, requiring only minor on-site warping.
- Integrated projection, lasers, LED wall, LX, AX and atmospherics into the stage environment.
- Positioned aerial performers on PA towers and shipping-container paw structures.
- Transformed upcycled industrial material into a world-class monumental festival environment.
- Delivered a temporary structure that operated as an altar, a stage environment and a projection-mapped incarnation.
Why Gatekeeper Matters
Gatekeeper matters because it shows technical precision used deliberately as a method of mythmaking.
I transmuted material bound for an industrial recycling stream into a monumental jaguar deity: an altar, a stage environment, a projection-mapped incarnation.
The project transformed flat real-estate signs into undulating skin, scaffold into ritual architecture, and a bare festival site into a place of worship for sound and collective transformation.
Technical precision was the method. Myth was the result.