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There is something wrong with this grocery store.
As the products that line Omega Mart’s linoleum floors, production sections, and deli counters prove to be special even under close scrutiny, the store faces a more pressing problem: Customers continue to get lost in other worlds.
At Omega Mart, which opened Thursday, art collective Meow Wolf, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, used the setting of a grocery store to create a story that pushes the boundaries of space and of reason.
The main tenant of Area15 is a 50,000 square foot immersive experience in which visitors are invited to shop at a market that quickly gives way to an experimental art gallery, indoor theme park, entertainment room escape or a combination of these.
When browsing products such as “Camel’s Dream of Mushroom Sop”, “Emergency Clams” and “Who Told You This Was Butter”, customers should be careful not to go too far into the beverage refrigerator or sneak past the. PVC curtains from the grocery store. counter, or slip between the shelves of cereal aisles – as they may be in a different dimension.
“We create experiences that allow people to actively explore and discover,” says Corvas Brinkerhoff, Executive Creative Director of Meow Wolf Las Vegas. “There are no cards. You just wander where your curiosity takes you.
Visitors can choose to gaze at the bizarre products on grocery store shelves and wander the roughly 60 rooms of the labyrinthine world beyond.
Other visitors can see that the founder of parent company Dramcorp is missing. And that the company’s experiences with portal technology and a mysterious additive in its products may have something to do with it. These visitors can choose to rummage through employee computers and filing cabinets for evidence, ask probing HR bots, and search payphones, video transmissions and exhibit anomalies for clues.
Origins
The premise of Omega Mart originated in Santa Fe in 2009, when the artists of Meow Wolf pooled money for a DIY version that was little more than cinder block shelves with colorful water bottles.
“We kept coming back to the idea of the grocery store,” says Emily Montoya, co-founder of Meow Wolf and creative director of the grocery store. “It’s a staple of American life, and it has this branding that distorts reality. Having a familiar environment as a starting point makes you think about your surroundings.
Meow Wolf’s flagship attraction, the House of Eternal Return, where a family home leads to a multiverse of musical behemoth skeletons and ultraviolet forests, drew 500,000 visitors a year before it closed due to the pandemic.
COVID-19 required modifications to the Omega Mart experience.
Otherworldly spaces like a desert landscape with psychedelic swirling walls and dark hallways that pulsate with synchronized light are grounded with hand sanitizer dispensers at either end.
An interactive mirror that uses facial recognition comes with a small paddle printed with a nose and mouth, to bypass the obstruction of a face mask.
COVID-19 protocols have forced some artists, like Carey Thompson, who used light, sound, and sculpture to create a Wurlitzer walking jukebox, to trust his exhibit to be installed on Zoom.
“I wanted to build something big and immersive, full of light, color and movement,” Thompson says of his Juke Temple. “They approached me to submit a proposal. And they gave me the creative freedom to merge this futuristic technology with an ancient temple.
Lead Creative Producer Marsi Gray says Meow Wolf’s practice is not just to empower artists to create what they want, but to push them further.
“An artist proposed to create an interactive robot,” says Gray. “We hadn’t planned to have a robot before that. I said, “Why don’t you do two? “
Only Las Vegas
In 2017, Las Vegas artist Spencer Olsen created a two-dimensional wormhole as part of the Art Motel supported by Meow Wolf at the Life is Beautiful festival.
Olsen, now Creative Director for Omega Mart, expanded the idea, incorporating the bold design and graphic lighting of the first iteration, but replacing the matte black wormhole in the center with a dark tube slide that leads… something go.
“A big part of the process involves meeting rooms and playing make-believe with friends,” says Olsen. “Now it’s like having my imagination on the outside.”
More than 325 artists, from Las Vegas and overseas, have collaborated on Omega Mart.
“In the last four or five months, we’ve brought in all the local artists we knew to do the final leg,” says Olsen. “A lot of things under contract looked good – too good. We wanted texture and artistry on everything. “
A leap forward
Brinkerhoff sees the media mix within Omega Mart as a generational leap in storytelling.
“There’s not just one scenario to discover,” he says. “It’s like an open world video game. It’s about exploration. “
Some of the spaces to explore can only be accessed by crawling through a tunnel or climbing a rock face or sliding head first along a portal.
“We’ve found that if we can get people to crawl or climb or bring their bodies into different physical modes, we can open their minds,” he says.
Brinkerhoff acknowledges that a Santa Fe group of “artists and bizarre” is unlikely to have the opportunity to create something like Omega Mart.
“I hope people go away with the feeling that if we can do this, you can do whatever you dream of.”
Contact Janna Karel at [email protected]. To follow @jannainprogress on Twitter.
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