Tiny Steps into the Unknown: A Look at Immersive Art Attractions

I’ve always been obsessive about art museums. It’s the first thing I usually do when I visit a new city. And while I love to admire galleries full of paintings and sculptures by iconic artists, my favorite works take on a different quality: immersion.

After experiencing about fifteen emotions simultaneously inside Tim Shaw’s Mother, the Air is Blue, the Air is Dangerous in college, I was hooked on the entire concept of immersive art. It takes one set of skills to make a beautiful painting; it takes another to transform a space and make viewers forget they’re in a museum. 

Yayoi Kusama is arguably the queen of such installations, with her polka-dotted rooms:

You might also remember Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project, in which he created an artificial sun in the Tate Modern.

But lately, the concept seems to be exploding in popularity outside the world of contemporary art. “Immersive experiences” are something of a tourism staple these days, from the million franchises of the Museum of Illusions, to that traveling Van Gogh projection.

Personally, I find many of these places to be a little too touristy. If there’s an identical copy of your “mind-blowing experience” the next city over, it feels less like a step out of reality and more like a gimmick. 

However, there’s one major exception to my sentiment towards major art exhibit chains, and that’s Meow Wolf: five locations, each completely different, each with an interactive story from the same universe. Their fandom definitely seems to be growing — the Vegas location is now on most lists of “Things to do in Vegas” (including mine), and there are even some folks who plan entire trips just to experience a new Meow Wolf (including me).

It’s hard to adequately describe the feeling of a Meow Wolf if you’ve never been to one. Imagine parking your car and walking into a nondescript warehouse, and then spending the next 3–-5 hours completely forgetting your normal life as you’re overcome with a need to solve a gripping interdimensional mystery by rifling through the items inside an artistic, interactive alien world. 

They really don’t mess around when it comes to details. I once opened a filing cabinet in one of their exhibits, expecting to find it either empty or locked, but it was full of readable typed pages with text that matched the worldbuilding. 

I always walk out of Meow Wolf feeling like I’ve just crash landed back on Earth after a vacation to another planet, which is exactly what I want from an immersive art exhibit. 

I’ve heard the Doloris Mazes in Tilburg and Utrecht bring a similarly surreal experience to the Netherlands, but without having visited, they’re a bit shrouded in mystery for me — phones and cameras are strictly banned, making it difficult to get a sense of the art inside without seeing it for yourself. The mystery grows even more tantalizing when you learn that all guests must enter alone, blindfolded. 

The intensity of their entrance rules is probably how the question “Is it scary?” ended up in their FAQ. Their answer includes the following lines:

“Because you do not know what lies ahead, entering the maze can feel exciting or tense. This feeling comes from stepping into the unknown rather than from any intention to frighten you.”

How poetic!

I think that quote really gets to the core of what makes these exhibits so popular, and so exhilarating to me. I can’t accurately explain Meow Wolf to you if you haven’t visited, and I’ll never understand the Doloris Meta Maze until I visit the Netherlands and see it for myself.

It makes sense that places like this become magnets for visiting travelers, because it really is like microdosing on travel — you never quite know what’ll meet you when you arrive, but you emerge with the sense that your normal life is lightyears away. And while you can spend hours telling your loved ones about it, you can never truly share the feeling with them.

I could write paragraphs about my experience in that Tim Shaw installation. I could describe, in perfect detail, the café tables, the floating trays, the eerie blue glow and the muffled audio. But I can never fully share the experience of waiting in line in an art museum with no idea of what was in that room, and then suddenly being immersed in another world. You just have to walk through that door yourself.

So here’s to stepping into the unknown, even if it’s just the contents of a gallery! And if you’ve had any similar experiences with an art installation or interactive experience, let me know in the comments — I’m always hungry for more.