Co-founders Tammy Greenman and Kelsey Karper talk about their upcoming new permanent art installation
This past weekend, hundreds of people stood in line for the final day of BEYOND, the latest immersive art experience by Factory Obscura in Oklahoma City, who also brought us the popular SHIFT. Since its opening, BEYOND has hosted live music, storytelling sessions, dance parties, and even immersive theatre. Factory Obscura’s next project, MIX-TAPE, aims to be a permanent installation and will be created with support from Meow Wolf and The Flaming Lips.
We spoke to Factory Obscura co-founders Tammy Greenman and Kelsey Karper about what’s next over email.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
No Proscenium (NP): Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background in the immersive arts?
Tammy Greenman (TG): I am a co-founder and the Director of Strategic Creativity for Factory Obscura. My background in immersive experience dates back to childhood when I would create elaborate outdoor forts and “ mini worlds” with other kids in the neighborhood and create stories and characters for us all to act out.
In the late 80’s I found myself curating sound experiences as a DJ while in college at USF in Tampa, Florida and then in the early 90’s I created large scale immersive fashion/theatrical performances while working at the seminal punk rock palace Junkman’s Daughter in Atlanta, Georgia. Also in Atlanta I played drums in punk and riot grrrl bands that incorporated immersive experiences into our live shows.
When I moved to OKC in the early 2000’s, I began to take all the skills and ideas I had developed over the years to create immersive and interactive gallery pieces. This is where I really began to intentionally seek to develop relationships between people and the art they were experiencing. I’ve always been interested in creating moments, but whereas before the intent was creating a fully immersive atmosphere in order to foster a good time or a
“you had to be there” moment, I began to seek to create specific emotional responses from the public and found that adding an interactive component created a more full experience.
Kelsey Karper (KK): I am Kelsey Karper, co-founder and Director of Logistical Creativity for Factory Obscura. As an artist I have explored various media, but my creative practice is mostly focused on collaboration with other artists by providing practical, logistical, and creative support to realize ambitious ideas. Through my experience working with artists in the commercial gallery and non-profit artist support worlds, it became clear to me that an artists impact was often limited due to a lack of resources, and sometimes even due to a restricted view of their own potential. I began experimenting with my role as a curator and collaborator to find new ways to support artists in making really big ideas happen. During my 9 years at the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC), I worked with many artists to move their practice forward and became very familiar with their most common needs. I later took this knowledge to Current Studio, a temporary experimental art space I co-founded with my creative partner romy owens. There, we developed a series of large-scale projects with artists, culminating in the first Factory Obscura experience, SHIFT.
NP: What, in a nutshell, is the MIX-TAPE project about? Can you tell us about the two different phases?
TG: MIX-TAPE is an immersive art experience taking inspiration from the old school (’80s) custom of creating homemade musical compilations/playlists on cassette tape to give to others as a way to express emotion, garner friendship, and to tell a story about the person creating it. The artists of Factory Obscura will produce a 20th century version of an audio autobiography through creating an immersive, visual, auditory, and tactile art experience to share with Oklahoma City and the world.
Phase I of MIX-TAPE (opening March 21, 2019) includes an interactive window display, an immersive gift shop, and a lobby area featuring the Flaming Lips’ “The King’s Mouth” fully restored and ready to be experienced.
KK: The interactive window is actually an enormous boombox built on the exterior of the building. Passersby are invited to press all the buttons and see what happens. Our gift shop, Bonus Track, will include merchandise from Factory Obscura and our team of artists, along with merchandise from our friends Meow Wolf and The Flaming Lips.
TG: Phase II of MIX-TAPE (opening September 21, 2019) will be the full experience. We will distill the essence of our inspirational songs into a visual and auditory experience. MIX-TAPE will provide a thoughtful, compelling, immersive experience that will incorporate new technology as well as amazingly crafted environments by the artists of Factory Obscura. We’re hoping to collaborate with other collectives to bring some new surprises!
KK: At about 6,000 square feet, MIX-TAPE is double the size of our most recent experience, BEYOND. It’s also the first time our team will build an experience to be permanent, which means we’ll be investing in bigger ways in materials, technology, and interactive components.
NP: How did the project come about? How has music inspired you to make this experience?
TG: After opening our second temporary experience BEYOND this fall, we were gearing up to begin the investor round on what we affectionately dub “The Big One,” which is our permanent 40–60,000 square foot home. Through conversations we were having with property owners, developers, and investors the opportunity to create our first smaller scale permanent experience was presented by local developer and art supporter, Steve Mason.
While we toured the space, I kept thinking about the musical legacy of The Womb, being the brainchild of Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips who had since moved on to a more suitable space, and how we could take that seed and grow it into something new and amazing. I grew up during the height of the mix-tape craze, and I believe that music is a language we can communicate through so after talking with the team about this idea of a musical journey…the idea of MIX-TAPE was born.
We, as a team, enjoy and are inspired by such a wide variety of music and we thought how cool it could be to take people on a journey to get to know us as a collective through the songs (in a non-literal way) that had an impact on us as humans and as artists. In this way, we will be creating a permanent experience that honors the musical legacy of the building and allows us to grow and change it over time as we become inspired in new and different ways by the music that comes into our lives.
KK: This project came at a very opportune moment in the development of our collective and company. With the support of building owner and investor Steve Mason, this project has allowed Factory Obscura to hire our first full time staff members and to continue growing our skills and capacity as artists. Our growth toward “The Big One” has been intentionally incremental, and this turned out to be the perfect next step for us. (KK)
NP: Who are your collaborators? How did Factory Obscura get connected with The Flaming Lips and Meow Wolf?
TG: We have over 40 local artists and volunteers who work on our experiences. We have visual artists, dancers and movement artists, poets and writers, auditory artists, designers, tech people, wood workers, etc…on the team. We also collaborate with the community by hosting “Work Nights” when folks come in to help us make smaller parts of larger pieces. Those “Work Night” bring in hundreds of volunteers and helps us strengthen our bonds with the community.
KK: Yes, making this kind of work takes a lot of hands, and we have been so fortunate to receive an outpouring of support from our community. Not only do they want to see new kinds of art experiences in OKC, but they have also invested time, energy, and often money to help make it happen. We want our community to feel a certain ownership and connection to what we make, and giving them a hand in it makes all the difference.
TG: We’ve been connected with Meow Wolf almost from the beginning of our journey as an art collective. Two of our co-founders, Laura and Laurent Massenat, reached out to Meow Wolf CEO Vince Kadlubek early on in our founding stage and Vince, along with the rest of the Meow Wolf team, couldn’t have been more open and supportive. He came out to visit us early on during the creation of our first temporary experience SHIFT, which opened at the end of 2017. Meow Wolf generously donated $10,000 to that experience, helped build support for us through social media, and many of the co-founders and artists of Meow Wolf came out to our opening night. We have all the love for Meow Wolf and we are continuing to grow this relationship with them into the future.
Our connection to the Flaming Lips is more about how they’ve created the space for us to exist in the city. Through their musical career, international fanbase, and development of The Womb as an iconic OKC landmark, they’ve been able to shine a spotlight on Oklahoma City as a creative hub and have made it possible for those outside of our city and state to recognize the immense talent we have here.
We are so excited for the public to get to experience the newly refurbished and enhanced “The King’s Mouth” in the lobby of MIX-TAPE and we hope to build on the experimental, exploratory, and creative legacy Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips have nurtured in The Womb.
NP: Why is Oklahoma City a great place to have a permanent immersive art venue?
TG: Oklahoma City is coming into its own. We’ve been doing the work to create ways for art and artists to thrive here, and while there is still more work to do, the public is hungry for and embracing this new experience economy. We witnessed first hand how ready people are, and how far away they were willing to travel, when we opened our first temporary experience, SHIFT. We had 20,000 people through the doors. We ran from November 9, 2017 through February 25, 2018 and were only open the equivalent of 24 hours a week and people were lining up for sometimes 2 hours to get in.
Our geographical location is also a key factor, there are about 14 million people living within a 4 hour drive of the city, and we’ve seen folks driving from Colorado, Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Texas specifically to experience SHIFT and BEYOND.
KK: Oklahoma City has been in an exciting period of growth for several years now, thanks to strong investments from city leadership and citizens. It feels like there’s something of a pioneer spirit that remains here, with people willing to take risks to try something new. And in a place like Oklahoma City, there’s still plenty of room to add something new and the community has shown a willingness to show up to support it.
NP: How have audiences responded so far to SHIFT and BEYOND?
TG: I don’t think we were truly ready for the way in which SHIFT was embraced. People were coming from all over to experience this thing we had given everything to with no real concept of what the reception was going to be. It was amazing and humbling all at the same time.
With BEYOND we were more prepared, but still deeply grateful for, the reception, but it never gets old hearing people’s reactions to the experience. To watch people transform while being in the space and to hear the wonder and delight in their voices makes every 24 hour work shift and all the glue gun burns worth it. We’ve had many articles written about us and given many an interview, but one of my all time favorites was from a local magazine, Metro Family, and the 6 year old who wrote a kid review of BEYOND.
When asked, “Will other kids like visiting this art exhibition?” he responded, “…It’s good for kids to see that art can be weird and not be wrong. I also felt a lot of peace in different areas…It’s kind of like visiting another planet, then you go back to Earth and your regular house, but you can’t forget what you saw….
When you lay down to go to sleep, you’re going to see what’s behind the doors on your eyelids.”
— Isaac Roldan, age 6.
We see these sorts of responses from a wide range of people from different age groups and backgrounds and it’s why we create what we create and why we create in this specific experiential way.
KK: I have never seen such deeply personal, emotional responses to art as I have through these experiences. People who are self-described as “not art people” come in with hesitation and then come back the next day with friends, a newly converted ambassador. Strangers share the space together and feel an instant connection, eager to share discoveries of tiny details with whoever happens to be nearby. Friends and families who are grieving losses have come to the space for healing and reflection together. We’ve hosted weddings, birthdays, and other moments of significance. To create something out of nothing, and to have it embraced by these participants, is nothing short of magical. I have always known that art can impact people in a deep and positive way, but never has it been so apparent.
NP: How is the audience incorporated into your work? How do you design around audience participation, agency, consent, and safety?
TG: We create with the audience in mind. In addition to the thematic journey we want to take an audience on we also think about what their physical abilities might be to interact with the space.
During the run of SHIFT we had children with sensory and physical differences come to the experience, so we got to witness firsthand what a tactile faux fur wall meant to a little girl with vision loss, and what a wall pod that could be snuggled into meant to a child with sensory issues.
We also want to make as much of the space wheelchair and handicap accessible.
KK: As we move forward with future experiences that are designed to be permanent, we intend to invest in this more intentionally. We are seeking input from experts and people with disabilities about how we can make an experience not only accessible to someone in a wheelchair or with a disability, but for their experience to be somehow enhanced by their abilities. For example, there may be some details or experiences you’d likely miss unless you were sitting at wheelchair height, or able to read Braille text.
TG: We incorporate the audience into the work with our volunteer “Work Nights” where volunteers make origami, cut felt, paint leaves, make rock walls. In this way, people get to see something they helped create come to life in the experience. They get to have some ownership in the larger experience. The audience also becomes incorporated through the energy they bring to the space. The space can only hold so many people before it impacts the feel, we strive to maintain a level of audience that enhances rather than detracts from the larger experience.
KK: It is the nature of immersive, experiential art is that the audience is inherently part of it. The environment is not complete until there are people inside interacting with the space. For our artists, seeing people participate in the space often gives us ideas for new projects or teaches us something about how to make the experience more engaging. We also often incorporate performers, who really bring our environments to life. We regularly partner with Perpetual Motion Dance and have also worked with 19th Century Hound, a local theatre company creating immersive performances. These performers are very aware and responsive to the needs and desires of our participants. It’s important to us that everyone is comfortable in the space, so we never force an interaction without their consent.
TG: We never tell the audience how to experience the space, there is no map, no right or wrong way to be in the space.
KK: We like to allow our participants to feel what it’s like to discover something organically. Imagine being a child playing in a forest. There are no posted signs with instructions, nobody tells you how to play in a forest, you just follow your curiosity and imagination. This freedom of play and exploration is important for humans of all ages, and we try to create that in our experiences.
NP: What do you hope participants take away from the MIX-TAPE experience?
TG: I hope they take away a sense of experiencing an emotional journey that is as fully realized as their favorite song or most impactful moment in life. I hope they are challenged to look at life in a new way, and they are inspired to create something in their own life for themselves or others, I hope they feel all the emotion and craft we will put into the experience, and I hope they are changed in a positive way by it.
KK: MIX-TAPE will take you through a whole range of experiences, exploring all the various emotions that can be triggered by music. This universal experience with music can be difficult to capture, but our team is approaching it in a way that allows points of entry for everyone, no matter their preferred style of music, age, or background. I hope participants take away a renewed sense of hope and wonder, like that feeling you get on a road trip in the summertime with the windows down and your favorite song comes on.
MIX-TAPE opens in March 21 in Oklahoma City at The Womb.
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