Last November, a group of folks working the field of immersive in Colorado self-organized the first ever Denver Immersive Summit, a day long gathering of professionals in the industry. The event hosted luminaries like Jenny Weinbloom, Executive Producer of Meow Wolf Denver and our own Noah J. Nelson, founder/publisher of No Proscenium: The Guide to Everything Immersive, who spoke to sold out crowds about the challenges facing the immersive industry today.
This summer, The Denver Immersive Summit, in collaboration the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Off-Center, will present The Denver Immersive Retrospectacle, a celebration of the past, present and future of Colorado’s immersive art and entertainment scene.
We spoke to co-organizers Jenny Filipetti and David Thomas to learn more.
No Proscenium (NP): Can you tell us a little about yourselves and your backgrounds in the immersive arts?
Jenny Filipetti (JF): My work as an electronic media artist explores how we might expand human perceptual experiences through technology, so I’ve long been drawn to experiential theatre and installation arts as practices for exploring new kinds of encounters. Professionally I’m also on the faculty of Inworks, an initiative fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and human-centered design thinking at the University of Colorado Denver and Anschutz Medical Campus. To me, immersive pushes to the extreme many of the ideas and practices that are important for creative work and meaningful innovation of all kinds.
David Thomas (DT): Professionally, I am an IT director at the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus. Academically, I am a professor in the Department of Architecture, where I study fun! Even though I am often focused on what makes places and things fun, I was drawn to the diversity of the immersive art and entertainment world. To my mind, the organizing factor across the diversity of what people consider immersive is this underlying aesthetic of play or fun!
NP: What, in a nutshell, is this Retrospectacle about? Can you tell us a little about the programming you have in store?
JF/DT: Immersive in Denver is blowing up in every direction and dimension you can imagine — theatre and dance, escape rooms, retail pop-ups, and, of course, this gigantic new Meow Wolf location they are building and their new ride at Elitch Gardens theme park.
We’ve been looking for ways to bring this polyphonic community together, to dream the future of immersive together and to support each other. The Retrospectacle is a one-night event focused around networking, celebrating what we have accomplished in our region as a community, and little inspiration and education.
We are bringing in a Nordic LARP expert from Finland: Jaako Stenros. Jaako is an academic researcher who looks at play through a pretty interesting lens, and as many NoPro fans know, Nordic LARP has long been pushing the boundaries of immersive form and content. We hope that Jaako’s talk will inspire our creatives and give some really practical advice for creating truly immersive and transformational experiences.
In addition, we have recruited track chairs to present short, fun summaries of what has happened in the past 18 months in Mile High immersive and look to what’s next in the region.
NP: How does Retrospectacle build on the Denver Immersive Summit from last fall?
JF/DT: We’re continuing to celebrate and connect the regional community, and with this event are looking forward to also injecting a little provocation about what’s possible in this space.
We are also hoping as a one-night program, we might be able to attract a larger audience of patrons. The Denver Immersive Summit brought together primarily immersive creators, along with students and fans, for a packed day of resource-sharing, but we’ve realized that to build a strong future-forward community, we want to see a lot of other kinds of people with us in the room: entrepreneurs, city officials, educators, and the many people out there who are curious about immersive and want to learn more. We hope the Retrospectacle’s format maintains momentum in the community for folks who joined us last fall, while also inviting in some new faces to get inspired by what immersive is all about!
NP: What can you tell us about the yearbook you’re planning?
JF/DT: The biggest thing we hear from immersive creatives locally is that they feel disconnected. We have makers that are looking for actors, producers that are looking for venues, city people looking for content, and on and on. So, first and foremost, the Yearbook is about connecting people.
Beyond that, we want the Yearbook to help organize and demonstrate the range and depth of immersive in the Denver area. Lots of artists are having trouble getting funding from more traditional benefactors because there isn’t a broad cultural understanding about what immersive is. We hope that by collecting immersive — it all its crazy manifestations — we can tell a story that this is a powerful emerging art and entertainment form worth investing in.
NP: Why is Colorado a great place for immersive arts and artists?
JF: Remember that Colorado is a place where waking up at 5am to tackle fourteener mountains in the summer heat is many people’s idea of a perfect Saturday. Both creatively and otherwise, people here have long been stretching the boundaries of human experience. Add to that an exceptionally collaborative creative community, whether across visual artists, musicians, creative activists, and beyond, and you have an incredible place for experimentation and possibility-pushing.
DT: Some of that might be the size of the city and its relative geographical isolation. People in Colorado love Colorado. So they love to connect and network. Denver is big enough to have a wide variety of people, but small enough that you can still pick up the phone and talk to or pitch an idea to just about anyone. So, it’s a creative crucible. If you have a great idea, then the Mile High air is the perfect environment to test it.
Oh, and we have Casa Bonita. So, there that!
NP: Who are you hoping attends this event?
JF/DT: We sold out the first Denver Immersive Summit, with 250 movers, makers, producers, and shakers from across the local immersive arts and entertainment space showing up to take part. We hope most of those folks return. And then we want them to bring their creative friends.
Immersive is such a big tent, we want to get more people inspired by what is possible in the space. I guess our motto is “more more more”. More ideas, more diversity and more people. Anyone who makes, performs, produces, promotes, invents, invests, educates or just enjoys immersive should have a great time at the Retrospectacle.
NP: What do you hope participants take away from the event?
JF/DT: A concrete commitment to continuing the conversation. We can’t reveal too much, but unlike your high school yearbook, ours looks to the future in addition to celebrating our recent past!
We’re hoping that the Retrospectacle sparks new creative thinking, connection-making, and collaboration across creative fields and practitioners. We want people to leave with a pocket full of new contacts, a head full of crazy ideas, and renewed excitement and urgency to get stuff done. You know, the little things!
We also want people to have a lot of fun!
The Denver Immersive Retrospectable will take place August 15 in Denver. Tickets are $35.
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