Ambiance Master Nate Brown

Whenever I do an interview, I always like to start with this question: What draws you to speak to me?

It’s funny, a lot of people want to know that, including many creative directors. If you speak to an architect or if you speak to an artist, they’re obviously going to give you a different definition of their working capacity.

When I approach something like that, I try to take it down to the most Dr. Seuss level of what the thing is—strip all the intellect from it, try to make it as simple as possible, and then build from there. Everyone now looks at fashion. Some of those people might be there in person, some online, and some via Instagram. Some will be on Snapchat and Facebook live. Whatever the medium of delivery is, you’re basically building a multi-sensory experience. Clothes are a part of it, but they’re a small percentage of it now, right? For instance, the Yeezy show last season was the ultimate field trip out to the middle of nowhere to see someone’s clothes. It was a full-blown spectacle—and I’m not going to comment on whether that was right or wrong—it was just the epitome of a fashion show as a cultural experience in 2016.

That’s always fun for me, you have so many senses you can engage. We try to reverse engineer that. What do you have that people can ingest? You have music. You have visuals. You even have scent, if you want it. As a creative director the sky is not the limit, and I like that. I like working within a tangible canvas. That’s anything from budget, to space, to the opening act, to the whole tour. There are so many different parameters you have to work within, and those parameters automatically ground you from thinking too high up. Before we thought about doing a Bonnie and Clyde story for Beyonce, we were thinking about what the stage representation would be so that people can have a more deeply ingrained experience. Historically, it’s a crowd of stage and screens, but the Kanye show—with him on stage hanging close to the ceiling—was a great example of what we do. It screwed up the VIP vs. General Admission experience. At the cheapest ticket price, you were the closest you could be at the show. That’s never happened before.

It’s something you always have to deal with when you’re a pop star at that level, right? How do you create a democratic viewpoint when you’re an ultra celebrity, an ultra superstar? Playing into that is very important. In some ways, I was blown away by Gaga’s Super Bowl performance. When she jumped off the roof of that super dome or whatever it is—she doesn’t give a fuck man, she’s fearless. Even if I would have done it differently, I can look at that performance and say it’s one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen.

Absolutely. But if you’ve talked to a creative director about a project, you’ll probably get a very deep and detailed story about what the thing is. A lot of that detail was probably used to sell it to investors. Ambiance is an impossible thing to translate to someone who’s also going to be paying for it.

Pre-internet, creative directors had to go to a library, or travel to India with a camera to pull references. Then those references would be something you'd hold very true to your heart, because you had to go and discover them. Now, we’re in the era where discovering the reference is the easiest part of the job. I think everyone has a different style of working. I like to think of my style as mathematical. I look at a problem that might exist and try to solve it—whether the solution is a visual component, a sonic component, or tied to another sense experience. It’s solving equations.

Totally, and it is devoid of a lot of real life emotion that is required. Ultimately, what we’re trying to do via any of our outlets is for someone to gain some kind of experience from it. So, if you’re limited to the fifteen inches between your eyeballs and an LED screen, your experiential capacity is limited too.

I think on a grand scale, like working with NASA. We’re so far off, but that’s ultimately the Henry Ford of 2030, you know? Like what Elon Musk is doing, trying to pioneer space travel. That kind of stuff makes me think: ‘Let’s put a concert on in space instead of at another football stadium.’ So that’s what I’m trying to figure out, how to break the mold of the standard we’ve created. On a smaller scale, there are really cool companies that are coming up with concepts of doing concerts in people’s bedrooms, and that’s really exciting to me.

I think a dream project is figuring out ways to extend life, and that’s a very broad term. But, to extend life and take people off earth to some capacity.

Having everyone in space, living life in much more meaningful ways.

We’re totally trying to figure that out. Us living on this planet is very temporary. To actually have the audacity to think about being on Earth forever is pretty crazy.

Here’s the thing: you can’t really talk about it until it’s been done. So I live in the NDA zone. But a big motivator for me is trying to maximize our capabilities as humans. We’re building a platform right now called The Condition which is going to be the first wellness, health, activity platform—but done all through the lens of the creative collaborations we work with on a daily basis. Everyone wants to live their best life, but they don’t know how to do it.