The Art is Giving Immersive and I'm Glad
Some thoughts after visiting City Museum.
Recently I had the opportunity to spend a few days in St. Louis, a city I’ve never been to and knew little about. Despite this general lack of knowledge, it’s been on my list for a while—due to one simple fact:
City Museum is located in St. Louis.
City Museum seems like an impossibility. It’s more of an immersive art installation / bizarro playground than a museum. As I wandered (and climbed) through the collection of exhibits constructed from salvaged materials, it felt like I was exploring an imaginative child’s dream world. The floors were populated with whimsical creatures, and never before have I seen so many slides in one building.
Part of what made the experience so memorable was the people I shared it with. Strangers smiled and shrieked upon finding a new passageway or fun surprise. The kids were super into everything, but adults weren’t far behind. They shoved themselves into tiny spaces, not wanting to miss out on any potential discovery.
City Museum reminded me a lot of the Meow Wolf exhibit in Denver, which I cannot recommend enough. Exploring Meow Wolf is like getting lost in your favorite sci-fi novel. The team of artists who created it did not hold back on the weirdness, and everyone who wanders the Convergence Station is better off for it.
There’s also Sleep No More, an immersive experience in New York, where the audience wanders through a retelling of Macbeth. Sleep No More is odd, disorienting, and distinct. Visiting the McKittrick Hotel will forever be one of my favorite memories. (The show is closing soon, so get there if you can.)
I love an immersive experience. I love to live, just for a moment, in a place where ordinary life does not intrude, and anything might happen.
Though, sometimes it goes wrong. There’s the failed Willy Wonka situation in Glasgow, where greed, disorganization, and general laziness led to a disappointing, yet inadvertently hilarious experience. It turns out, these things can be fascinating, even when they’re terrible.
Immersive experiences bring us outside of mundanity—allowing us to exist inside the brains of their creators for a little while. When the exhibits are good, they lead to a level of delight I haven’t seen elsewhere. People will travel for miles to see them.
That comes down to the outrageous, exciting visions of the artists that build them—people who hunger to bring something wonderful into existence, and share it with those who will understand. They possess a need to make the world weirder and more beautiful.
I’ve been thinking about the Metaverse lately, and the many reasons things went wrong. A big reason for its failure was lack of vision. If people are going to spend time in an alternate version of reality, that world should be exciting, it should be fun, and it should dazzle. There needs to be a team of ambitious creatives involved, people who aren’t merely working to satisfy metrics and shareholders, but are motivated by bringing their wildest, nerdiest, and most vivid dreams to life.
Human creativity is unpredictable and hard to control, but it is necessary if we’re to build new worlds, and build them well.
Thanks,
~Sarah
Stuff I Wrote
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