WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

Tetsuya Wakuda, Kylie Minogue, U2 and a neon-lit strip like no other, Sin City always puts on a show, writes LIZ BOND.

- LIZ BOND

I’m watching night swallow up the day. Moonless, the darkness seems magnified by the electrifying light show. Each and every audacious neon starburst and revolution dances and fights for my dollars. All recklessly glowing until the sun clocks on for the day shift.

When it does, early morning machines wash the streets and nearly all traces of the night before. Day does the grunt work to re-supply the city and ensure each nightly show is brighter than before.

As sure as night follows day, Las Vegas’ essential promise has always been reinvention, from casinos and hotels to the latest street hustle. Old neon doesn’t get to retire; it’s repurposed and works every night at downtown’s Neon Museum, only in Las Vegas.

But there’s a new light show, a new face in town. An enormous, brightly animated emoji. Parked on prime real estate, it silently surveys tourists, conventioneers, big spenders and me on one of the world’s most photographed promenades – Las Vegas Boulevard, aka the Strip.

More otherworldly than creepy, this enormous yellow, expression-filled mug transforms in the blink of an eye into a snow globe kaleidoscope before changing into a spinning Mother Earth and next a crater-filled moon. These are some of the many faces of Sphere – Las Vegas’ latest, world-first LED-lit entertainment venue. Much like the city itself, Sphere doesn’t stay still for long.

Where else but the world’s capital of entertainment and distraction could this $3.4 billion marvel be? Officially launched by a series of U2 concert extravaganzas, now filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s groundbreaking audio-visual production, Postcard from Earth, puts Sphere’s “22nd-century immersive technology” to the test.