Portland’s Fathom offers new immersive art experience

There’s a new entry in Portland’s art scene. But it’s not your typical exhibit or art show where the canvases or sculptures are carefully curated and displayed to be enjoyed from a respectful distance. Instead, Fathom is an underwater-themed immersive art experience abounding with opportunities for interaction, whether it’s the 21-foot-long, animatronic humpback whale that sings at the touch of a button, glowing treasure chests, a room of infinity mirrors to get lost in or a giant, illuminated clam to lounge inside of.

More than 30 artists worked on Fathom, led by Roboto Octopodo, an artist collective that was launched by the same creative team behind the Portland Winter Light Festival. Tickets can be purchased online to attend the show which is open three days a week through October. Joining us to talk about Fathom and the growing appeal of immersive art experiences is Tyler FuQua, a co-founder of Roboto Octopodo and an Oregon City artist who makes large-scale installation artworks.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. There is a new destination in Portland’s art scene. It’s not your typical exhibit or art show where the canvases or sculptures are off limits and need to be enjoyed from a respectful distance. Instead, Fathom is an underwater themed immersive art experience where you are encouraged to fully engage in the works, whether it is a 21-foot-long animatronic humpback whale that sings at the touch of a button, a room of infinity mirrors to get lost in or a giant illuminated vinyl covered clam mattress that you can lounge on. Fathom is the first large-scale project by the artist collective Roboto Octopodo, which shares some creative team members with the Portland Winter Light Festival. Tyler FuQua is one of the co-founders of the collective. He joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.

Tyler FuQua: Thanks for having me back.

Miller: What is Roboto Octopodo? This group that you’ve co-founded?

FuQua: Well, there’s so much creative energy in Portland. We wanted to bring it all together and create an immersive experience, because they’re really popping up all over the country right now. And we realized that Portland really doesn’t have that quite yet, not the way we’re doing it. So we wanted to bring everybody together. We have so much creatives here and just build something that people would really enjoy.

Miller: This new show is a full sensory experience: sights, sounds, things to touch. I want to give folks a sense for what it sounds like, since this is radio, it’s all we can do in some ways. This is what folks hear early after entering the space:

[Sounds playing]

So, can you describe what people walk into?

FuQua: Yes. So first you walk into the space and it just looks like a boring kind of office, yet on the wall to your right is what we’re calling a “ripple in space time” that has glowing lights coming out of it, looks like it’s water coming out of the wall almost in a way. And that is where you start your adventure. You walk through a little tunnel through an anemone alley covered with fur and mirrors and all sorts of spinning lights. And that just shoots you off into the world of fathom.

Miller: What is the story that’s threaded through this show?

FuQua: So Roboto Octopodo is a mysterious global organization that whenever one of these space time ripples open up, we show up and we monitor it and we study it with research. And so what we need is we need help from the public to be our test subjects. I mean, they told me to stop saying that. Our fellow researchers, I mean …

Miller: [Laughter] They … “Don’t call them test subjects.”

FuQua: I know, I keep messing that up. But, to come in and study the world as well. It’s just a fun, kind of loosely science-based sort of adventure you go on. You get a little clipboard as you go in to help with your research. There’s a lot of weird, silly science questions on there. There’s also an observation hunt where you go around, you try and find everything that’s on this list. So you’re helping us explore space while we’re observing how you as a human interact inside this weird interdimensional world.

Miller: I should say you are wearing … you have safety goggles on your forehead right now and you do have a white lab coat.

FuQua: And I did even know this was a radio show, but it just helps get me into character, you know.

Miller: Let’s see if we can hear some more audio from the show, this is from the ice cave.

[Water sounds playing]

How did you settle on this underwater theme?

FuQua: Well, it all kind of came together. We have grand plans of opening a more permanent location in Portland in the future. And Fathom will simply be one of the worlds in this space. So this underwater world, we kind of already had it designed. And then last year, the theme for the Portland Winter Light Festival was “What glows under pressure,” which is underwater based as well. And then also a lot of our fellow artists already had underwater based art existing such as the whale, the clam and various other things too. So all these three things came together and it just made sense to make a crazy underwater world.

Miller: I went on Sunday. I hadn’t recognized you and so we didn’t even say hello. But I saw you watching the other folks. You had your lab coat on and you’re sort of watching them as they walked around. What are you paying attention to when visitors come in?

FuQua: Well, first off, you’re allowed to touch everything in there and that’s so different than a lot of places you go, especially museums or art or art exhibits. You’re not supposed to touch stuff. Here, you’re supposed to touch everything. So, first off, I’m just making sure people are being gentle with the art because it is all handmade and it could be fragile. So that’s the first thing, but we do want people to touch it. And then also I’m making sure that they’re having a good time, if they have any questions, if they need to know where the bathroom is or maybe they need help on their observation or they’re trying to find the really hard to find, tiny Mr. Plywood sign that’s hidden somewhere inside Fathom.

Miller: My kids took a long time looking for that one.

FuQua: It’s so hard to find.

Miller: What kind of considerations do you or other artists have to take into account when you’re designing something that ideally thousands of people are going to be touching?

FuQua: You want to build it as strong as you can from the get go. Of course, we’re gonna learn a lot as we go, we’re going to learn what works and what didn’t. We’re going to be fixing stuff and replacing what works, but that’s all part of the adventure. We want texture so we have fabrics and stuff and we know some stuff’s gonna get dirty or whatever and will need to be replaced and that’s just all part of the fun.

Miller: There are other examples in Portland – Hopscotch and other artist collectives around the country now. Why do you think these various models of immersive and participatory art seem to be taking off?

FuQua: It’s kind of the same reason you go to a movie. You want to be immersed in another world for the time you’re in there. But we’re taking you and we’re putting you in the movie and in an immersive art experience, you’re part of the art, you’re inside of the art and you just don’t get that when you go to a normal museum or a normal art gallery. So we want you to be not just a spectator, but an active participant in the adventure.

Miller: Can you describe one of the rooms where folks can actually make music using their hands, essentially?

FuQua: Ah, I believe you’re talking about quadrant 64.

Miller: How could I forget the number?

FuQua: Yeah. The home of Arnie and Lou, the two mysterious Laser Harp UFOs. Yeah, you walk into this black and white room and you’ll see these lasers shooting down from these UFOs and each time you break a laser with your hand, it creates a tone or a sound of some sort of music. And you don’t need to be a musician to figure out how to do it. If you just leave your hand in there long enough, you’ll get a beat going, then you reach out to another one and you can work with a friend and you could just create just a fun musical accompaniment.

Miller: Let’s have a listen to how it can sound. This is just one version of it with somebody using their hands to move these lasers around.

[Music playing]

You were talking about how this is like movies, this puts you inside someplace but even more fully inside. What lessons do you think this more participatory model holds for traditional museums?

FuQua: Well, I think people are looking for more than just looking at stuff nowadays. Even at festivals or music shows you go to, they’re incorporating a lot more art into it

because people don’t want to just sit there and look at stuff anymore. They want to do stuff, they want to interact. And that’s just a huge part of life and now a huge part of art, especially with kids and stuff, being able to go in and touch stuff. You don’t get to do that normally unless you’re at Disneyland, but we don’t have one of those here, so we’re the next best thing.

Miller: Fifty artists work on this, is that right?

FuQua: Oh, from somewhere around there. Yeah. We had a bunch of artists that have such amazing skills from performers to painters, to sculptors, everything. And then there’s a ton of volunteers helped us build it. Just a great community project. It was awesome.

Miller: What are your bigger plans for this collective, for Roboto Octopodo?

FuQua: So this is just our pop up. We did a little sneak peek during the Light Festival, we had 5,000 people come in during 16 hours which was awesome. And now this is just a pop up. We’ll be open until at least October, maybe more if it’s super successful, which we hope it will be. And then we’re gonna open up a much larger, probably five times the size permanent space somewhere in Portland with many different worlds and way more artists coming together, just to create something that hopefully Portland from forevermore will be known for.

Miller: What has visitorship been like so far over the last month?

FuQua: People are coming in the doors. And I think the greatest part about it is that people come in like, we asked them how they heard about us [and] they say, “Oh my friend told me because they were here.” So word of mouth is spreading and I think it’s gonna just start snowballing especially after stuff like this today.

Miller: Do you need to get a certain number of visitors to prove to future investors that this model is viable? I mean, what you’re talking about, the next plans are for a much bigger permanent space and many, many artists who are all going to be working on this. I mean, do you have to prove that this can work in Portland?

FuQua: I think it can. I mean, Portland’s weird, right? That’s what we’re known for. And most people or a lot of people have heard about Meow Wolf, they’ve really set the bar high and I think they’re opening their sixth location soon. So just using the Meow Wolf model, it’s proven that people love this sort of immersive art experience and we’re definitely heavily influenced by them. One of their creative senior directors helped advise us along the way. And so we’re kinda jumping on their coattails and bringing a cool immersive, handmade kind of crafty, feely art to Portland.

Miller: Of the artists that have worked on this, how many of them are volunteers – in this for the love – and how many of them are being paid?

FuQua: We’re working all that out, you know, it’s hard. We did this out of our pockets, like all the co-founders, we’ve funded it all so far.

Miller: Just credit cards.

FuQua: Exactly, yeah, pretty much. We do have a handful of interested people that love what we’re doing, they have the financial backing and so we’re having talks with them. And of course, we can’t do this without the artists. So our plan is to get all our artists paid, because we literally cannot do this without them, they’re amazing.

Miller: So, the underwater explanation is the first part of this. What are the dreams for what you would do in a much bigger space?

FuQua: I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that Fathom is simply the blue room.

Miller: Is that the end of the sentence? OK.

FuQua: Yeah, just think of Portland, colorful rainbow. That’s all I can say.

Miller:  Tyler FuQua, thanks very much.

FuQua: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Tyler FuQua is an artist co-founder of the artist collective Roboto Octopodo. It is an immersive art experience production company. Their first big-scale iteration is up right now. It’s called Fathom. It’s in downtown Portland. It is open on Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays. You can find information for tickets on our website opb.org/thinkoutloud.

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