Brightening A Las Vegas Mainstay: Phish LDs Chris Kuroda & Andrew Giffin Transform Rio Hotel & Casino

The Sphere isn’t the only building in Las Vegas Phish lighting designer Chris Kuroda and associate lighting designer Andrew Giffin will be lighting up in the near future. Kuroda and Giffin collaborated “to create an ever-evolving light show” on the exterior of Sin City’s Rio Hotel & Casino.

The dazzling new installation utilizes over three miles of programmable LEDs supplied by the firm ClearLED. CK5 and Gif used their vast experience in the live music industry to create the visual art piece that marks a huge refresh for the Rio. The programmable LEDs allowed the pair to design a series of shows that will be a “thoughtful, never-before-seen lighting feature where every pixel is meticulously programmed,” as per a press release.

The Rio was purchased in 2019 by current owner-operators Dreamscape Companies. Dreamscape’s vice president of construction and development services Marty Millman has been a big Phish fan for “34 years or so,” he told Las Vegas Weekly. Millman tapped Kuroda to create the new installation. Kuroda enlisted Giffin and the pair spent a week in a Rio suite programming the lights.

“I think there’s about 60 looks. We’ve got 10-minute looks that are slow and evolving, and then every 10 minutes there’s something a little bit more exciting that happens fast and speeds up,” Millman explained. “They also designed programming to randomize how that’s all selected, so no two nights are going to be the same.”

The new lighting at the Rio will be debuted soon. Testing is currently underway and Kuroda continues to provide new ideas for the installation. “What we want is to put on a show,” Millman added. “We want authenticity. We want subtlety, to some degree. And we knew that he could program the lights from an artistic perspective, where it’s a gift to Las Vegas. … We knew we’d have some great new LED screens where we can tell everybody how great the Rio is and what our new offerings are. But we wanted the facade to be noticed.”

Phish makes their Vegas Sphere debut on April 18. The quartet will play a four-night stand at the state-of-the-art venue that runs through April 21.