INDIO, California — Anyone who walked into the Sahara Tent at Coachella shortly after midnight on Friday saw something that no one had ever seen before.

The Lucent Dossier Experience — an L.A.-based collective that combines vocal performances with avant-garde performers and aerial artists — gave a groundbreaking performance using real-time 3D Live graphics for the first time.

Image: getty images

It's Lucent's 11th year performing at the Indio, California, music festival, but it was their first time taking on anything this ambitious. The 3D LED display tracked graphics that reacted and changed in response to the performers' movements.

"We've all been to 3D movies, but to put it in a live event and to put performers in front of an LED and have the images flying around and past and over the performers.... it's a brand new world," Lucent founder and creative director Dream Rockwell told Mashable the day after the show.

She said the technology was originally intended to premiere during Michael Jackson's tour right before he passed away.

"It's kind of been shelved all this time," Rockwell said. After she got connected to 3D Live Events, she took the idea to festival founder Paul Tollett, who — after seeing a demo of the performance — offered them the Sahara stage, Coachella's home for all things dance music.

Image: getty images

But there were "a lot of bugs to work out," and it wasn't until six weeks before the show that they knew for sure that it was happening.

And when Friday did roll around, they had a mere 10 minutes between sets to get everything together.

"We were ironing out the kinks right up until performance time," Rockwell said.

They'll perform again this Friday, and Rockwell said she's hoping they'll have most of those kinks worked out.

"I have a feeling we're going to see lots and lots of this," Rockwell said of the 3D Live technology. "I think we're at the beginning of something that's going to be really big."

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