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Experiencing Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station

Opinion
Crochet eyes Meow Wolf Convergence Station

On a recent visit to Denver, we had the chance to explore Meow Wolf’s third permanent venue

Blooloop has been following the rise and rise of game-changing arts collective Meow Wolf for several years now. Over the past decade, we’ve watched Meow Wolf expand from its first permanent venue in Santa Fe, House of Eternal Return, and introduce new spaces in Las Vegas, at AREA15, and Denver, in the form of Convergence Station, with more installations to come. And, while immersive location-based experiences have exploded over the last few years, Meow Wolf is perhaps the king of them all.

All this goes some way to explain how excited I was to finally experience Meow Wolf’s unique offering for myself on a recent visit to Denver while attending AAM 2023.

Numina Meow Wolf Denver

The story behind Meow Wolf Convergence Station

Convergence Station in Denver, Meow Wolf’s third permanent exhibition, opened in September 2021. It isn’t, however, the collective’s first foray into the Colorado city. In 2019, Meow Wolf introduced a new dark ride at Denver’s Elitch Garden, Kaleidoscape.

This attraction was intended as a prequel Convergence Station. The ride experience focused on the harnessing of a Cosmic Egg by the Quantum Department of Transportation, in order to open a path to a new universe. In Convergence Station, this new universe, or universes, are revealed, and guests can explore them at their leisure.

Colourful friend at Convergence Station

Setting the stage for the experience, Meow Wolf says:

“Commute via the Quantum Department of Transportation to the Convergence, a bustling city created by a rare cosmic event that joined four alien worlds. When you’re not trading memories as a form of currency, you and your fellow interdimensional travelers can venture out into four floors of surreality featuring Meow Wolf’s most epic art to date.

“If you’ve ever wanted to wax heroic at the crossroads of a real-life sci-fi neutopia, this is the space-time for you.” 

Creating the immersive installations

Meow Wolf first announced Convergence Station in 2018. The venue, a 90,000-square-foot space in downtown Denver, is Meow Wolf’s biggest installation.

Spanning four floors, with hundreds of installations and over 79 unique projects, Convergence Station is home to a cafe and retail space as well. It also includes The Perplexiplex, a 488-person live performance venue.

Cathedral - eemia ice world

Convergence Station features work from hundreds of Meow Wolf artists and 110+ collaborating local artists, including indigenous artists. This team brought together their own various specialisms in architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, video production, cross-reality, music, audio engineering, narrative writing, costuming, and performance to create something truly unique.

The theme of memory

Part of the story of this fantastical world is that, when the realms converged, there was a devasting “memory storm”. This erased the inhabitants’ memories. As a result, in the Convergence, memory is currency.

Those wishing to delve deeper into the story can opt for the QPASS experience. This is an optional RFID card that transforms the visit into an interactive quest and unlocks extra digital content. The QPASS will allow them to discover the Convergence Exchange and find out more about the impact of the Convergence. They can collect fragments of memories and even reunite them with their owners.

Characters at Meow Wolf Denver

The QPASS can shed more light on the event that brought the realms together, and the intentions of the Quantum Department of Transportation. For instance, does this organisation have the best interests of the inhabitants at heart? And what happened to the “forgotten four”?

This is an element that will keep visitors coming back for more, as they build a full picture.

Experiencing Meow Wolf Convergence Station

Character at Meow Wolf Denver

Once you clear the security checks and enter the building, residents are on hand to point you in the right direction. The recommended starting point for first-time visitors is to board the Tave Route Access Mechanism (TRAM) System to C Street. From here, guests are free to wander across several floors and discover the rest of the alien realms. This includes the Ice Cities of Eemia, Numina, and the Ossuary.

C Street

Stepping out onto C Street, the view is of a jumble of colourful storefronts, cafes and other businesses. There’s even a cinema and a hairdresser. There are also vehicles, which were enthusiastically explored by a school group on a field trip during my visit. There was much delight as they pulled various levers to discover hidden properties.

This floor is where the adventure begins. Guests can peek through the windows of the alien businesses, open doors, peek around corners and see how the world starts to unfold around them, with several new directions to choose from. You can even pull a hidden handle to find a world inside a laundrette vending machine.

Trash-Pile-Symphony-Meow-Wolf-Denver

Stepping through a series of doorways, with interactive installations at every turn, it’s easy to lose sight of which direction you have come from. Eventually, this exploration, with fun distractions along the way (like the enjoyable Gremlin Symphony), will lead to one of the other realms. In my case, I found myself in the stunning three-level Numina.

Numina

Numina

There is something new to look at everywhere you look in this lush fantasy world. Paths wind upwards for a view over the realm, with plenty of spaces to explore. Compared with the brash futuristic shopfronts and neon signs of C Street, the vibe here is natural. The installations echo plant fronds, clouds and jellyfish.

According to the Meow Wolf Convergence Station artists:

“Numina is an organic landscape that is actually a sixth-dimensional sentient plant – the many cells of which are all timelines and universes within. Everything within the space is either an organelle of the single cell or a visitor who has been welcomed into the whole.”

There are also various critters to be discovered, and touching different surfaces can awaken music. A request to one of the alien residents to “communicate with Numina” could even make the ceiling of the cosmohedron come alive.

Eemia

Eemia, Convergence Station’s Ice World, is set around a giant and colourful Cathedral. Inside, visitors can play with the organ. Meanwhile, interaction with one of the residents could lead to a secret code being revealed and a wormhole opening.

Throne in Ice World at Convergence Station, Meow Wolf

The story here is that Eemia is home to an ancient, advanced civilization. They used the power of the Navigators to explore the universe. Then, 1000 years ago this planet was forced into an ice age when one of the planet’s three suns erupted and sent it to the outer edges of its solar system. Now, Eemians keep their eyes on the stars, longing for a rift in the sky to open and for the distant Navigators to return home.

Like the other realms, there is something new to look at in every direction, including the ceiling.

The Ossuary

Piles of books, the Ossurary

The Ossuary is a slightly eerie, underground space. Here, catacomb-like rooms and corridors interconnect with more intimate hidden spaces, from a book-filled den to a shine of memories. Again, there are many different spaces to explore, with installations themed around the gathering of information and memory.

According to the Convergence Station narrative from Meow Wolf, this ancient space is home to Oss. This is a crystal that can store memories – the basis of the realms’ economy.

“Convergence has made Oss incredibly valued, turning what was once a small economy into a major one,” says Meow Wolf’s team of creators. “It gave this underground Oss-trading society a chance to resurface and also bolstered the Library’s trove of multiversal information. But there is a fear that newcomers will corrupt or steal Oss. Some think Ossuary must be protected at all costs.”

Sadly, I did not have a chance to experience The Perplexiplex, as it was closed for a private function. This space features interactive projection mapping from Moment Factory, the multimedia entertainment studio specialising in the conception and production of immersive environments. You can read more about its creation here.

FOMO?

The experience is somewhat overwhelming, but not necessarily in a bad way. There’s just so much to take in, although there are calmer rooms and spaces built into Meow Wolf Convergence Station as well. As someone who has a tendency to feel anxious about potentially missing things, even when visiting a more conventional attraction, I did find myself wishing for a map at times, so I could tick sections off.

Yet, I realise this would ultimately destroy part of the experience. Convergence Station encourages a more childlike exploration style, where we can just enjoy what is around the next corner without worrying whether we are “doing it right”. In an earlier interview with blooloop, talking about House of Eternal Return, Vince Kadlubek, one of the founders of Meow Wolf, said:

Bank of screens at Meow Wolf Convergence Session

“We don’t tell them where to go. We don’t give them maps, or a guide. All we do is give them total freedom to do what they want to do in a ‘choose your own adventure’ sort of experience.

“The type of experience that people have is original. There is nobody who is doing what we do in the way that we are doing it. There are museums, children’s museums, and there are themed rides at Disneyland. But nobody else is just letting people explore, and I think that is critical.”

In a world where we’re constantly rushing around and trying to do everything, it is a breath of fresh air to be free to simply explore.

The rise of artainment

Artainment and immersive experiences are both huge trends in the attractions industry at the moment. So, what sets Meow Wolf apart from the competition?

Firstly, Meow Wolf has been in the game for a long time – since 2008 to be precise. Over the last 15 years, the group has managed to expand and become a highly profitable business enterprise, without losing sight of its origins.

Detail from ceiling at Meow Wolf Denver

“I was here in 2008 with a bunch of friends, all in our twenties,” Kadlubek said to blooloop in 2017. “We didn’t really know what we were doing with our lives. Yet we knew we needed to be creative. We all wanted to make art.  Some of us were doing more performative projects, others were doing music or visual art. We decided to get together, rent a space, start an art collective, and just make stuff. 

“That’s pretty much what we did for, like, seven years. Nobody got paid, and no money was involved. There was no business. We were just making art.”

Authentic and joyful creation

Meow Wolf’s roots have helped it to remain authentic, despite its growth and popularity. And guests can feel that authenticity throughout the Meow Wolf Convergence Station experience. This is not something cobbled together to make the most of a buzzword. It’s a labour of love for the talented team of artists.

Cathedral in Eemia Ice World

In an opinion post on blooloop, Kadlubek previously talked about the debate around whether Meow Wolf is art. Speaking about the question “Is Meow Wolf art?“, and the formation of Meow Wolf as a reaction to an elitist art world, he said:

“In 2008, when we formed, this was my personal instigation interest. Everyone involved at the beginning of Meow Wolf had their own interests. I wanted to provoke these sorts of dilemmas in the Art World. And the best way to do so was to build from a place of joy and innocence. To create with a sense of childlike wonder. We wanted to make Art that didn’t need to stimulate intellectually but instead replenish the heart through play, joke, exploration.

“Then, invite the masses. Get kids in there. Get families inside of these exhibits. Allow people in, without the pressure of having to buy anything or having to wonder: “Am I wanted here?” Just play, all are welcome, our creative worlds can be experienced by whomever. And then once the general population experienced the work, we called it Art. Because it was.”

This intention to connect the public to the joy that art can bring is evident in a visit to Convergence Station.

What’s next for Meow Wolf?

Meow Wolf‘s fourth permanent exhibition is called ‘The Real Unreal’. This is set to open on 14 July at the Grapevine Mills shopping mall in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, Texas.

“Malls have been such an incredible and weird part of the American story, especially for a lot of us that grew up in the ’80s and ’90s,” says Kadlubek. “It is an exciting thought that these spaces could be filled with incredible art and immersive experiences, opening a new era of opportunity for the creative economy.”

lasers and mirrors at Meow Wolf Convergence Station

The collective promises that guests will enjoy a technicolour wonderland that merges storytelling, technology and immersive art. The new location will also include a cafe, shop and venue for live events.

Meow Wolf is also opening its fifth permanent exhibition in the Fifth Ward of Houston in 2024.

“Meow Wolf has always been about making art accessible to as many folks as possible, and in areas that may not have as many artistic offerings,” Kadlubek adds. “[We] could’ve easily considered areas like Deep Ellum or the Arts District, but thought this was a great opportunity to impact a whole new audience with our work.”

All images credit C.Coates

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charlotte coates

Charlotte Coates

Charlotte Coates is blooloop's editor. She is from Brighton, UK and previously worked as a librarian. She has a strong interest in arts, culture and information and graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in English Literature. Charlotte can usually be found either with her head in a book or planning her next travel adventure.

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