Meow Wolf’s biggest attraction yet has finally come to Denver. But that’s by no means the whole story. For years, Denver has been preparing for Meow Wolf’s arrival in ways that are impacting not just the city but the entire region – and very likely beyond.
Millennials across the globe increasingly value experiences over material possessions.
For a while now, Denver has been the number one choice of those among them wanting to move to a new city in the US, and a third of Denver residents are now millennials (CNBC). City government took notice, and laid plans to stay ahead of the curve with a multi-year community-generated cultural plan designed to fully integrate arts, culture and creativity into daily life, work and play. These ingredients of Denver’s special sauce are part planned, part serendipitous – and that recipe is the reason Meow Wolf and Alt Ethos CEO and Founder Ethan Bach (who had worked together in Santa Fe on helping to elect a new mayor and in Denver for the Meow Wolf announcement party) recognized the potential and established their primary operations in Denver.
Years in the making, the Meow Wolf Effect is still unfolding.
Early predictions were for 1.5M visitors per annum, but the surge of advance ticket sales suggests there may well be a lot more. Whatever the number, this massive new influx of visitors will have major implications for the creative economy (“Is Meow Wolf good for artists? Overall, yes” – Denver Post), the tourist industry, and the culture at large. It will transform opportunities for growth in entertainment offerings, art sales, retail, and dining, which will have a ripple effect across the region. It’s never been just about the Meow Wolf site itself.
As Ethan says: “The Meow Wolf Effect is an intimate and intentional look into a cultural phenomenon sparking the creative economy in a way that I have not witnessed in my lifetime.
This is our moment of opportunity. If we keep harnessing our collective energy with strategic planning in order to make the best possible outcome, we can make a huge shift in the new economy.”
We are thrilled to be hosting our sister-nonprofit organization, DATA’s virtual event. Denver Arts + Technology Advancement (DATA) is offering a free live demonstration of our browser-based immersive digital world learning environment, the DATA Campus in Pathos Metaverse, on Thursday, October 21, 2021. DATA will welcome guests into the browser-based event at 3pm MST for networking and avatar customization before the speaker’s program begins. Register here.
As schools and universities reopen their doors, DATA has been developing solutions designed to launch us into a new world of learning beyond video calls. COVID has mercilessly exposed gaps and weaknesses in all aspects of our lives. People of all ages and backgrounds flocked online to seek the human connection, sense of purpose, and safe environments that the pandemic had so suddenly taken away. The potential of digital meeting and learning spaces is clear. Yet what can be done about the equally clear problem of online fatigue and disconnection – and the lost learning that resulted?
Now, over a year into the pandemic, major changes need to be made in the way we teach and learn. The impact to students is severe (McKinsey, July 2021):
K–12 students on average 5 months behind in mathematics & 4 months behind in reading by the end of the 2020-21 school year
Students in majority Black schools left with 6 months of unfinished learning; students in low-income schools with seven.
May lead to students earning $49,000 – $61,000 less over their lifetime; potential impact on US economy is $128 – $188 billion every year (McKinsey, July 2021).
DATA has embraced extended reality (XR) technology as the solution to inspire meaningful engagement that is at the heart of a good education and transformative learning outcomes. In Pathos, all learners can create their own avatars and be transported into an immersive world that integrates the organic nature of in-person networking with an intuitive virtual platform that can be accessed from anywhere on the planet. The digital tools of this immersive world are comparable to those in computer games, yet these engage the learner in different ways – ways that are fun, enjoyable, and accessible. In addition, immersive digital tools are designed to promote cognitive development and learners’ ability to retain what was learned – similar to educational modalities, like field trips or planetariums. DATA’s work complements and supports the digital integration of these and other classroom innovations that will be fundamental to achieving good learning outcomes and surviving and thriving in a challenging world ever-changed by the pandemic. In Pathos, DATA will convene leading educators, institutions, and community members to explore how to re-energize global accessible learning and shape a brighter future for our youth beyond COVID-19 pandemic.
We welcome you to come to hear our esteemed panelists speak about immersive worlds and education.
Don’t miss the free live demonstration of our browser-based immersive digital world learning environment, the DATA Campus in Pathos Metaverse, on Thursday, October 21, 2021. We hope to see you at DATA’s ground-breaking Pathos demo event, Education in a Digital World: Opportunities for Immersive Education and Engagement, on October 21, 2021. Register here.
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About DATA (Denver Arts + Technology Advancement): Our mission is to develop the best and brightest digital creatives using immersive arts and technology programming to assist learning, retain information, and achieve a higher level of consciousness. www.denverartstech.org
On behalf of The Colorado Creative Industries (CCI) and Alt Ethos, we invite you to our virtual presentation “Global Creative Connection through Immersive Virtual Worlds” hosted in our new Pathos Metaverse, a 3D avatar platform, this Friday October 1st, 2021 at 2:00 PM MST
Alt Ethos Presentation: Come explore the future of art, technology, and global connectivity through virtual worlds from top creators and thought leaders in the immersive industry. The pandemic shot us into the future of digital engagement and immersive worlds. As some creatives quickly grasped the change to become known internationally, others were left confused. This talk will walk you through the history, present, and future of virtual worlds and how they will impact the global community, our professional lives, and our collective digital future. Speakers:
Julian Reyes, MC
Eric Dallimore, Moderator Panelists
Carlos Austin
Ethan Bach
Evo (Evonne) Heyning
Celeste Lear
Q&A from audience submitted in writing
Carlos Austin, Real-Time “In World (VR)” Live Multi-cam video switching and still photographer at Austin Photograph
Carlos is passionate about the arts with an emphasis on photography/video “in-world” TV production and emerging drone technology. An XR evangelist as this technology begins to mature. Helping create Broadcast television standards for capturing live events in virtual social platforms. Real-time switching live shows with a multi-camera setup. There are so many opportunities to communicate and educate the world through XR. 3rd Generation photographer and storyteller.
Ethan Bach, CEO Alt Ethos
Ethan Bach is the founding CEO of Alt Ethos: experiential design agency and Founder and Board Member of DATA (Denver Arts + Technology Advancement). Westword calls Ethan, “An entrepreneur with an eye on the future’s future.” Bach holds an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Alt Ethos is an award-winning design company and has been recognized in CodaWorx Magazine; the Young Industry Professionals, and by the Mayor of Fort Collins.
Evo (Evonne) Heyning, Metaverse Media. Creative Executive Producer
Evo Heyning is an award-winning producer, technologist, founder and creator focused on the future of participatory media. Evo focuses on collaborative teams that work across fields, sectors, and platforms to create meaningful global endeavors. Evo has created virtual beings, worlds, and campaigns for 20 years. Evo produced major live streaming concerts and campaigns for the White House including the launch of the Affordable Care Act and virtual worlds for diplomacy, civic engagement, and nonprofit development.
Celeste Lear, Immersive Event Producer & Designer, XR Entertainment Specialist, Music & Sound Director, Host, VR Consultant
DJ Celeste is an entertainment & event industry professional with 15+ years of concert, festival & conference production experience. Immersive technology expert skilled in designing & executing cutting-edge events both physically, virtually, AND in Virtual Reality. First in a new wave of DJs who design their own stages & perform as avatars in VR Festivals and Nightclubs. Executive music direction, production & clearance for International, multi-media installation projects for UN & UNESCO, including a large-scale video mapping experience in Paris.
About Pathos Metaverse
Pathos Metaverse is a browser-based virtual world by Alt Ethos. For this panel, all of the speakers will be avatars in the Pathos Metaverse. Through live-action virtual cinematography, CCI participants will stream the event in real-time. Selected avatar audience members will also be in attendance and watching the entire production in the Pathos Metaverse.
Pathos Metaverse is an easy-to-use, dynamic, and engaging immersive platform. Pathos Metaverse provides exciting meeting places, dynamic events, branded virtual worlds, and future-thinking hybrid-virtual-world solutions, pushing the boundaries of interactivity.
In Bloomberg Opinion, writer Tae Kim talks about Facebook’s recent announcement to become a Metaverse company, explains the origin of the term, and reasons why he’s skeptical. Yet another step from Facebook in wanting to take over the Metaverse is its release of Horizon Workrooms. This new virtual-reality remote work app allows users of the company’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets to hold meetings as avatar versions of themselves.
CBS recently sat down with Mark Zuckberg to chat about the Metaverse and Workrooms for virtual offices: “So I think of the metaverse as the next generation of the internet,” Zuckerberg said. “So you can kind of think about it as, instead of being an internet that we look at, right, on our mobile phones or our computer screens, it’s an internet that we are a part of, or that we can be inside of.”
As Bloomberg Opinion states “If it is not going to be Facebook, who is poised to do well in the metaverse? Apple, Epic and Nvidia are well positioned, given their respective technological leadership in these hardware and software areas. And the two main mobile operations systems — Apple’s iOS and Alphabet’s Google Android — will likely benefit as apps and devices run on their dominant billion-user platforms.”
Last Holiday season, we enjoyed bringing two light show experiences to Cheyenne, Wyoming, through architectural mapping. Projected across the front of the historic Cheyenne Depot in downtown Cheyenne, we created a multimedia extravaganza for their traditional Downtown Lighting Celebration and dazzling the crowd.
Picture this:
A timer projected onto the Depot Museum tower ticked away the seconds as the evening event approached. With about 10 seconds to go, children that were gathered in the Depot Plaza began to yell out each number as it counted down, and as the timer hit zero, a loud boom sounded, and every light illuminated all at once. From all around the lights beamed – strung on trees, framing downtown buildings, and on tall evergreen trees.
The music started, and 3D shapes began to dance on the museum’s façade creating colorful projections of ornaments, wreaths, candy, fireworks, snow, and strings of lights that were all designed to the shape of the building. Since this was part of their 2020 Old West celebration, people laughed and cheered at the dancing cowboys on horseback herding bison, and at the end of each song, they whooped and cheered some more.
The event was such a success that a city council member was even seen wiping a tear from her eye. Alt Ethos was thrilled to help bring the holiday spirit and some much-needed sense of community safely to the folks in Cheyenne.
We are excited to be back in Cheyenne, Wyoming!
This 3D projection mapping holiday lights show was such a hit that we have been asked to make a more permanent attraction.
Our challenge is to address and impact the economic and cultural engagement throughout the city. As a permanent project our aim is to invite locals and tourists back into the city for celebration-themed holiday and event-specific content to keep visitors delighted and engaged and help drive economic development.
We look forward to the opportunity to exceed the creative expectations in the design and implementation of this visual experience. See you soon Cheyenne!
Interested in developing a projection mapping experience for your community or event?
