IMMERSIVE REMIX: Factory Obscura’s Mix-Tape By Carleigh Foutch
Audiences eagerly awaiting the Mix-Tape experience, Photo: Todd Clark
Automobile Alley has always been a place for the eclectic, and Factory Obscura’s Mix-Tape immersive art installation is no exception. Located at 25 NW 9th St (a.k.a. the former home of The Womb, the arts center founded by Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne), Mix-Tape is a warehouse of wonders that transports audiences to another world entirely. Kelsey Karper, co-founder of Factory Obscura, said the idea for Mix-Tape came about in 2017 as a way to honor Factory Obscura’s roots and create a space that would allow Oklahoma Citians to interact with local art while also feeling like they’d entered a playground of sorts.
“As artists, we’ve all been inspired by music,” Karper said. “It’s hard not to be. We started with the idea that music can communicate things about who we are or how we feel. The universal response to music is that it makes us feel things, no matter who you are, and that is powerful.”
founders wanted to make sure that every kind of art imaginable was represented. Everything from carpentry, sculptures, visual and textile art, video games, and even trash has been used and transformed to tell a new kind of story that’s meant for connection.
An initial conversation about what songs the Mix-Tape team would put on their own mixtape brought about the discovery that music can be essentially categorized into six different emotions: joy, angst, love, melancholy, hope, and wonder. These emotions became the impetus of the exhibit, with each of Mix-Tape’s rooms embodying a feeling that exhibit goers are able to interact with in unique ways. The
You enter through an ear straight into Joy, which is a blue and green wonderland bursting with light and sound. Mix-Tape is all about immersion, so everything’s meant to be touched, which Karper said was purposeful. It was important to the five founders of the project that Mix-Tape be something that destroyed the prerequisites that many believe art requires (i.e. that it can’t be touched, only admired, or that (continued to page 12)
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