House of Eternal Return
lead artist // multimedia design // lighting direction
House of Eternal Return was the first permanent installation built by Meow Wolf, and the catalyst for us to turn from a loose Santa Fe art collective to a company with offices and installations across the US.
In 2014 Meow Wolf members were mostly scattered doing their own thing. About 8 of us went to New Orleans to do a retrospective installation with a sense that Meow Wolf was potentially done. It was on this trip that future CEO Vince Kadlubek started speaking in earnest about his desire to do one last project, and to make it permanent in Santa Fe.
We started doing early concept designs in Caity Kennedy's living room, and by January 2015, I was working for Meow Wolf full time in a cold warehouse, one of three people first hired to start developing the interactive audiovisual technology and experiences that would be used throughout the space.
We all wore a lot of hats on the project. My primary role beyond Beam Space was the design and integration of AV systems and artwork throughout the space. We had a team creating narrative videos that showed the memories of the family in the story. I wanted to make these assets feel as much a part of the space as the painting and sculpture, developing novel integrations that included projection mapping, translucent projections in the pipes of the house, characters' faces appearing in mirrors, bits of dialog swirling in the audio.
Several months after opening, we developed the first immersive theater experience in the space. We had pushed so hard during the build just to get everything finished, and this presented an opportunity to look at the space as a whole to make more overarching creative decisions with light. I spent several weeks adding lights throughout to better shape the space, and working with light programmer Cathy Laughlin to dial in discrete light installations, bringing more cohesive aesthetic design to the space.
