Technoheads and Archer alike should have been envious of Gesaffelstein’s Coachella stage this last weekend, as the French producer employed a stage design that featured the blackest black…in the world. Called Vantablack, it is a black that is disorienting to the eye it’s so intense. The Verge reported all the details of the material’s inception, interviewing Ben Jensen, CTO of Surrey NanoSystems. “You’re used to standing in a completely dark room in the middle of the night, but you’re not used to seeing absolute blackness with a lot of light around it,” he says. “When you see that nothingness with light around it, your mind can be quite confused, and your perception of things like depth is severely challenged.”

The Verge also heard first-hand accounts from the slight struggles of the people who made it. “One of our sound engineers was onstage and found himself in the monolith,” says one of the workers at the venue. “[He] became confused and lost his balance. He fell, hit the surface, and I was like, ‘Okay that’s $20,000.’” Yikes.

The video may capture the effect for some of us, but the true treat was best captured by the real eyeballs smack in front of it. Let’s hope we can see this stage set up in the wild on a potential tour stop…because it’s really sad to only spend 20 grand for one show(technically two).

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