QuakeCon 2024 Part 2: Meow Wolf - The Real Unreal

This post is mostly going to be a photo dump because in all honesty I really can’t say much beyond the photos. Meow Wolf’s display, if you could even call it that due to its sheer enormity, was one crazy art concept after another. Borrowing from their website “The Real Unreal is an immersive, explorable, art and entertainment wonderland” and is “a portal to new dimensions of creativity.” They also say you can “experience the magic of exploration as you traverse through captivating spaces that spark curiosity for all ages.”

Now I must admit that while I generally respect all artists and their work, I do often have a hard time appreciating them. It’s pretty easy to classify me as someone who isn’t the artist’s intended audience. I’ve been to a few art museums over the years and, full confession, the vists when I was the youngest were when I was the most bored. Maybe it was (and still could be) because without proper context I couldn’t relate or identify with a given art piece, or maybe it’s because I’m severely left-brained. I see beauty in a machine more easily than in a painting. So with that I had rather low expectations and was anticipating a child/teen-oriented art exhibit with some level of interaction. But in most ways, The Real Unreal had everything I wasn’t expecting.

The Real Unreal was appropriately named: everything shown was something (or based on something) from the real world, but shown in an unreal fashion. A house? Yep, that’s real. A kitchen in said house with a refrigerator? Also real. Said refrigerator leads to a tunnel that connects to a hub of refrigerators that all lead to different places and possibly dimensions? Wat?!. The entire experience is non-linear as well, meaning there is no definitive beginning or end. The closest you get to a start or finish is just what is being shown near the entrances and exits.

We spent over two hours touring the place with me taking a quick rest being only time we spent more than a few minutes in one place. It really did seem like this place wouldn’t end. I mentioned our visit to a few friends at QuakeCon and they’re interested so hopefully we’ll all get to do a big group visit next year. With that, I’ll leave you with a long roll of photos, of which most should elicit some amount of WTF from you. Enjoy!