C’MON MEET ME
ON THE DANCEFLOOR

The Now Building’s immersive screens became the setting for a larger-than-life club party. Driven by the music and visuals of Confessions II, the space came alive with colour, movement and pop euphoria, inviting visitors to lose themselves in Madonna’s world.

The six-minute experience opened with vivid pink fabric filling the screens, followed by the lyric visualiser for I Feel So Free and its opening words: ‘Thanks for coming.’ Displayed across the walls and ceiling, the words welcomed everyone in the room.

The creative direction drew on the distinctive imagery of Confessions II: saturated pinks, flash photography and bold typography. Together, these elements connected the birthday celebration to Madonna’s latest work and provided the setting for the audience’s own images and stories.

“Madonna helped write the language of modern pop culture through decades of relentless work, constant reinvention and a refusal to stand still. We wanted to honour that drive and give the audience a genuine way to express their own connection to her work – through personal stories, emotions and messages.”

Alex Wolf, Creative Director, Lookport Studio

Visitors turned to scan the screens for their own faces and birthday wishes. When they spotted themselves, they pointed out their portraits to friends and took photographs to share on social media. Across the walls and ceiling, these personal tributes became part of Madonna’s visual world. Alongside birthday wishes were accounts of a deeper connection: visitors wrote about how Madonna’s music had helped them through difficult periods, given them the confidence to pursue a career or motivated them to work towards personal goals.

Overhead, new messages and portraits joined a growing composition of fan cards, pushing earlier contributions further into the digital space. The ceiling became a tunnel of images and words that accumulated as more people took part. Each six-minute showing followed the same creative framework, while the audience contributions changed throughout the day.

Behind these moments were a dedicated web platform and a real-time image system developed by Lookport.

A two-stage process brought visitors’ portraits into the installation. An initial treatment applied framing, colour and visual filters so that photographs could appear quickly. In parallel, a generative image process created a more stylised version using the project’s monochrome and pink palette, applying flash effects and adjusting backgrounds, lighting and texture while aiming to preserve each person’s identity.

Typically ready within one minute, the second portrait could replace the first on the screens. Visitors could track its progress on the submission page, save the finished image and share it.

Following planning and approvals, the installation came together over three weeks of active production, combining film editing, immersive visuals and a live audience platform in one experience.

Lookport and Outernet had worked together before on Antarctica: The Melting Silence, an immersive project involving artists, scientists and environmental organisations, including Greenpeace and WWF. That collaboration gave the teams a shared understanding of the space and an appetite to explore what else it could do. Outernet’s experience also spanned major music projects, from the Oasis x Spotify immersive experience to Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter-verse and Louis Tomlinson’s How Did I Get Here? album launch.

For the Madonna installation, these strengths came together around a new challenge: combining the album’s finished visuals with a constant flow of audience contributions. Lookport edited and adapted the artist’s material and developed the interactive platform and image-processing system. Outernet brought the experience to its screens, integrating and fine-tuning the live playback through Ventuz so that portraits and words could appear across different surfaces while the music and imagery continued around them.

“Working at this scale is an exciting challenge. We had to upscale the source material for these enormous screens, and rendering the final installation files alone takes around a day. Within a three-week production window, that becomes a big part of how you plan the work. But seeing it all come together in the space, with people adding their own faces and stories, makes the process incredibly rewarding.”

Alex Wolf, Creative Director, Lookport Studio

Behind the apparently effortless flow of images was a demanding live setup: five browser instances updating content across the high-resolution screens, with submissions passing through moderation before entering the display. Testing with the Outernet team focused on getting these elements to work together, keeping audience contributions flowing without disrupting the rhythm of the experience.

Some visitors were Madonna fans who had travelled especially to be there; others came across the installation while walking through central London and stayed to take part. The messages submitted through the platform included personal memories, birthday wishes and reflections on what her music had meant to people.

The installation became a gathering point for the weekend and also featured in The Guardian’s Photos of the Weekend gallery.

“Great cultural moments are about bringing people together and that is exactly what we want Outernet to do. Madonna has inspired audiences and artists for generations so it is a complete privilege to be able to celebrate her and her connection with fans in such a creative and interactive way.”

Philip O’Ferrall, CEO, Outernet

Throughout her career, Madonna has challenged convention and set new directions for the music industry. Here, that spirit found expression in a space where people could step into her visual world and leave something of themselves within it. What began as a birthday tribute became a shared cultural moment, with fans and passers-by taking part in its creation. The format suggests possibilities well beyond a single celebration – for new experiments and unexpected collaborations that give music a different kind of public life.