5 cool things you’ll see at Meow Wolf LA (like a fish-shaped spaceship)

By Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times

Meow Wolf likes to say that its upcoming Los Angeles exhibition is focused on the art of storytelling — why it matters, what it means and how stories transform.

“This exhibition is about the inevitability of change,” says creative director Elizabeth Jarrett, “and how the stories that we tell ourselves and others have the ability to affect the way we perceive change and the way we experience it.”

That also means that Meow Wolf, known for its large-scale, explorable installations in Las Vegas, Denver, Houston, the Dallas suburbs and its home base of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will double down on its experiments with other media. Throughout the Los Angeles show, guests will encounter mixes of live action and animation, shadow boxes, games and even a mini escape room, only here guests have to break into rather than out of a secret room.

The Times spent two days in Santa Fe late last year to preview Meow Wolf’s Los Angeles exhibition, set to take over part of the Cinemark complex at Howard Hughes L.A. near the end of this year. Here are five fast things to know about the experience.

The Meow Wolf tourist attraction, which has been described as an “immersive, multimedia experiences,” at its location in an old bowling alley in Santa Fe, New Mexico on July 31, 2017. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS)

1. The exhibition pays homage to the multiplex

In Las Vegas, guests enter a trippy grocery store complete with parodies of household items before finding their way to the main exhibition space. In Santa Fe, it’s a house with otherworldly goings-on. And in Los Angeles, attendees will first find themselves in a movie theater.

Co-founder and executive vice president Sean Di Ianni says the team is aiming for “sticky floor, popcorn vibes.” “It’s a ’90s multiplex cinema, and we’re going to lean into that, to design the space to feel like that era of multiplex cinema,” Di Ianni says.

2. There will be a sentient candy — and an actual cafe

As guests traverse the cinema at the start of the show, they will encounter a concession stand where candy has sprung to life. In fact, one of the first art pieces in the space will be a multicolored installation in aquarium-like boxes of forgotten gummies and discarded pizza slices that appear to have a soul of their own.

There will be a cafe in the theater, and the lounge itself will be filled with art. Large-scale neon sculptures — a bunny, a martini glass — will grace the upper walls. And behind the bar will be a projection wall with original video designed to look decades old. “One of our inspirations was very early experimental video art, stuff people made with a Sandin Image Processor, stuff that was only possible because people in the ’60s and ’70s decided they were going to engineer circuits to make visual images,” says video designer Sue Slagle.

3. You can sit on a space bike

All of Meow Wolf’s exhibitions have a sci-fi bent, and Los Angeles will be no different, with many a nod to films of science fiction and fantasy. One part of the show will house a pair of space bikes. They will be rideable, situated in front of a giant screen to simulate movement. The engine will spin like the innards of a kaleidoscope and embedded in the bike will be a small mini-game.

There will be two space bikes, including one that’s ADA compliant. “The tires are pretty complicated,” says space bike designer Chris Hilson. “Why are they so complicated? We needed to put monitors in there. We’re going to have monitors in there showing some really insane spatial imagery. It gives them a really bold effect.”

4. There will be a spaceship — or is it a fish?

A major part of the exhibition space will house a spaceship. But it’s not just any spaceship. The so-called Dream Freighter is also a living being.

“The Dream Freighter is a living time-, space-traversing vessel that’s sort of shaped like a fish, but not a normal fish,” says Hilson.

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The centerpiece room of the ship will house a giant interactive screen, in which guests can twist knobs and panels to skip across different intergalactic worlds — or perhaps they’re just dreams. It isn’t quite clear. But the goal is something that feels both mechanical and biological.

“We’re going for a real kind of interesting organic appeal to this,” says Hilson. “I’ve been calling it bio nouveau.”

5. It’s L.A. so of course there’ll be a meditative space

Meow Wolf focuses on maximalist, sensory overloaded art, but at least one key space in Los Angeles will be dedicated to deep contemplation. And mushrooms.

“We’re going to make a sustainable room,” says Shakti Howeth, creative director. “It’s a decompression room where people can dip out of the main anchor to have a quiet meditative moment and recaliberate. It’s going to be all-natural treatments with a mycelia ceiling.”

The fungal feeling will extend to other parts of the exhibition as well. Meow Wolf is also working on a 30-foot tall explorable “mushroom tower,” which will have hidden interactions and secret hideaways. The latter will serve as one of the spiritual tentpoles of the space. It was important, says Howeth, for the Los Angeles exhibit to celebrate the organic.