Case Study: Active Theory creates immersive virtual festivals with Mux

How Active Theory builds living digital festivals with Mux’s video infrastructure

Active Theory, a digital production studio in Los Angeles, needed a better way to bring live music festivals online during the pandemic. For Secret Sky and later Second Sky, the team wanted a virtual venue that could do more than simply embed a livestream—it needed to connect audiences in a browser-based world and bridge the gap between digital and physical festival experiences. They used Mux’s video infrastructure to power the livestream experience.

Mux provided Active Theory with raw HLS streams, low-latency delivery, and developer-friendly APIs that could be integrated into their CMS and Dreamwave platform. With Mux, Active Theory was able to sample colors from the stream to light up the virtual world, embed video directly into 3D/WebGL experiences, and connect online and on-site attendees through digital portals. The result was a dynamic “microverse” festival format that scaled to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers and powered all of the video in the platform.

Active Theory

Michael Anthony

Co-Founder and Interactive Director