It wasn't a dream or a DMT trip — although those are the only things you could compare it to. The surreal journey came courtesy of a virtual-reality headset supplying one of the many experiences at Bubble Planet: An Immersive Experience, which opens at 3900 Elati Street on Friday, May 17.
Seated in these chairs, Bubble Planet visitors will encounter a VR experience.
Bubble Planet: An Immersive Experience
What sets Bubble Planet apart from those past immersive experiences is that it is far more interactive. While the Van Gogh and Monet exhibits mostly comprised projected images, Bubble Planet has nine rooms designed to engage visitors more physically, and is set up in a more artful format that draws inspiration from such esteemed immersive pioneers as Yayoi Kusama. Each room was created by Barcelona-based artist Marcos Viñals.
The first room teases the trippiness to come, with turtles, anemones, starfish and other marine life swirling in projections on the floor of a mirrored room. Throughout the exhibition, calming music sets a soothing tone that complements the message of Bubble Planet: to escape the daily grind, decompress and refresh.
"We really need stuff like this in our world today," Zaller says. "This just gets you out of the stresses of everyday life, to come and play. It's great for kids. It's great for families. It's great for date nights. ... We're playing these great isochronic tones and meditative tones, but they're also playful and uplifting."
The next room is a "bubble ocean," in which thousands of big pink balloons surround a lotus flower, whose petals rise and fall. As with the other rooms in the show, "it's great for people making content," Zaller notes. But don't be turned off by the exhibit's posture as an influencer's heaven — it also makes an effort to be scientific: As a placard outside the bubble ocean notes, circles are "The Shape of Life," and it lists how spheres occur in cells, specifically egg cells and the head of the sperm cell. In case the writing on the wall isn't enough, a smiling cartoon bubble surrounded by a swarm of swimming sperm shows just that. Such idiosyncrasies add a quirky charm to the experience, which also offers "the largest bubble bath in the world," Zaller says with a grin. That bubble bath is really a ball pit the size of a swimming pool, in a room aglow with soft pink lighting and clouds hanging from the ceiling.
You won't be alone in the bath: A giant, bald, androgynous blow-up head emerges at the end of the pool, with feet coming out at the other side. (I named it Kevin; as the adage goes, naming your fears takes away their power.) Zaller is quick to note that the balls in the pit are cleaned every Tuesday, when the exhibit is closed.
Almost everyone has fond childhood memories of blowing bubbles or bubble baths, Zaller says, and that's the sort of whimsy Bubble Planet wants to proliferate in each room. "It's an exercise in creativity, of how do we create something that captures this specific essence of a mood, which is joy and bliss and unfettered creativity?" he says. "And so this is what we came up with. The lighting helps, too — the pink light and light-purple carpet."
A hallway of glittering lights evokes Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Rooms.
Bubble Planet: An Immersive Experience
Visitors will be placed in a meditative mindset upon entering the room housing a geodome, which shines like the moon against blacked-out walls, ceiling and floor. Inside the dome are bean bags, and the interior is designed in such a way that voices echo while people are standing up and turn to a whisper when they're sitting down. Bubbles flow in projections over the ceiling, with water sound effects placing you in your own private world. Another highlight is a hallway of glowing orbs hanging from the ceiling, pulsing with light and reflecting off mirrored walls, similar to what Yayoi Kusama innovated with her Infinity Rooms in the 1960s. Another photo opportunity presents itself in a series of small rooms that each present a perfect selfie moment, in which you can swing from clouds or lie in a bathtub filled with rubber duckies.
But without a doubt, the best attraction in Bubble Planet is the virtual-reality experience. We've all had dreams in which we're flying, an incomparable but fleeting feeling that you strive to get back if you wake up too soon. And somehow, the VR achieves the same. Seated in a pod-like chair hung from the ceiling, you'll be cast into a whole new reality that rejuvenates and sparks wonder. Just be sure to keep your feet off the ground in order to fully experience the zero-gravity effect. Zaller has been part of the project since the beginning, working alongside late Exhibition Hub founder Mario Iacampo to bring the experience to life. Interactive screens at Bubble Planet show different paintings, such as "Mona Lisa" or "Girl With a Pearl Earring," with the subjects blowing bubblegum bubbles until they pop. Iacampo is also featured here, in an homage to the founder who was responsible for bringing these large-scale immersive exhibitions around the globe.
After successful runs in Europe and Los Angeles, Denver is the perfect city for Bubble Planet, Zaller says, given that it is "a really playful city, and there's a lot of creativity here."
As corny as it sounds, it's hard not to connect with your inner child in an experience such as Bubble Planet. It provides a welcome escape from quotidian responsibilities and folds you into a magical, enthralling world — one you'll want to keep returning to, just as you do when waking up from a splendid dream.
Zaller feels the same way. "For me, it's the energy that it creates inside of me," he says. "Just the music and lighting and the colors and all the different opportunities for play, right? It's inspiring. It's an inspiring space."
Bubble Planet opens Thursday, May 17. Tickets start at $26.90 for adults, $20.90 for those seventeen and under (children under five get in free).
