Meow Wolf Houston Tells Stories Through Sound and Art

Conspiracy theories sound like fun and games when it comes to contemplating the universe and other out-of-this-world possibilities—but what if we told you that you can immerse yourself into a new dimension without ever leaving Houston? With Meow Wolf’s latest permanent “exhibit,” Radio Tave, visitors can escape reality thanks to the hard work of local artists and a whole team of audio engineers.

As with Meow Wolf’s other experiences in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, Las Vegas, Denver, and Santa Fe, this new art space features an interconnected maze filled with unique rooms, each telling a different story. With such intricate designs involved, the most obvious element of the whole attraction is the art, but there’s one overlooked facet that’s just as important to the experience: sound. Think about it. If you stand in a room with art, you’ll see the work of the artist, but if you stand in a room where the art and light fixtures work together to complement one another, you’ll fully sink into the space.

Meow Wolf takes this to a new level. Matt Hettich, senior director of audio, video, and lighting, says the Houston location features a sound-forward exhibition.

“This project was really unique from the audio, video, and lighting perspective because of the nature of the narrative,” Hettich says. “And nothing in Meow Wolf, in my opinion, counts as background music. Music and audio play a key role in building any of our spaces.”

Hettich, who has a background in electronic music and music composition, says he had an especially fun time designing the audio part of the exhibit. When creating a sound, he thinks deeply about what the artist is trying to convey.

“We spend a lot of time building and navigating how the audio is going to work with the lighting and other disciplines to make the [experience] more inherent to the guest,” Hettich says. “We’re kind of going for a density that allows us to move sound around your head or play with the lights in a way that’s more involved and implies a living, breathing world.” 

At the center of Radio Tave’s overarching narrative is ETNL, a West Texas community radio station plucked from its small-town setting and plopped into a surreal alternate dimension. With a theme like that, a strong sense of sound is critical to crafting the most absorbing possible environment. Broadcasts from the fictional station include both interactive and static soundscapes designed to emulate a small radio station from the 1970s and ’80s. It’s analogue and scratchy, full of corny commercials and show-host chatter.

To enhance the homey—not to mention very beige, wood-paneled, and needlepoint pillow–laden—atmosphere, the sound team worked in tandem with the visual artists to ensure the strongest interplay between their concepts.

Eric Heep, a show audio engineer at Meow Wolf, made considerable contributions to ETNL’s retro look and feel. He mentions one of the first interactives that visitors encounter as an example of the intensive collaboration required to craft an effective immersive experience. Microphones and cameras pick up guests’ voices and faces, then get distorted back to them. The heavily sensory experience, meant to disorient as they transition from our familiar world to this bizarre dimension, relies entirely on the proper dovetailing between elements.

“I would decide how my audio system works, and then Morgan Bernard, the video artist, would create something in response to me making the system. Then I would look at what he’s doing and change my approach,” Heep says. “There’s this kind of organic quality to how we create these interactives based on this, either the process going back and forth and just being inspired by the other artists and how they respond to you.”

The same interdisciplinary spirit also permeates the story-within-a-story of CJ, the protagonist of artist Janell Langford’s installation Obsidiodyssey. CJ receives a commission to craft a music video for a fictional musician named Fantastrophe, and visitors are privy to her innermost thoughts, processes, and insecurities. One of the rooms in the narrative places visitors inside a joyous dance club featuring three site-specific tracks from local electronic musician Pro Ghost. They can control the music in the space as well as the synced clubgoers projected on the wall.

Senior sound technologist Les Stuck, who’s also worked at several other Meow Wolf outposts, collaborated with Langford to express the agony and the ecstasy of CJ’s journey.

“Over the years, I’ve really thought a lot about sound and image and how they go together. The simplest connection, I think, is film music. The entire story is told with the image and the script and the text, but the music adds the mood,” Stuck says. “That’s something that we can do in some of our rooms. You have a room that has a certain visual look and idea, and then we can just make a track of music that supports that feeling.”

Radio Tave is also the first in Meow Wolf history to offer a fully functional dive bar and restaurant, Cowboix Hevvven. You’ll feel like you’ve entered an old-timey honky-tonk that would be filled with blue-collar workers having a beer after a long day, like in an old Western movie. No matter which side you walk in from, you’ll be greeted by angels, demons, and other funky characters. The best part? It’s all interactive.

“The creative intention is really to have it feel like a busy bar on a Friday night,” says Ben Wright, senior show audio designer for Meow Wolf.

Wright was the lead for Cowboix Hevvven as well as many other areas of the exhibition including the Bailiwick, the Glowquarium, and the front of house. One of the first things he did to familiarize himself with Houston was reaching out directly to local musicians. In Cowboix Hevvven alone, there are about 50 different artists featured in its most obvious interactive feature, which is at the center of it all: the jukebox.

Don’t let its normal jukebox appearance fool you. A lot more work went into it than meets the eye. Rather than purchasing a jukebox, Wright’s team created the one featured in Cowboix Hevvven just for the space so it could incorporate a fun Easter egg. Press “777” and you’ll notice a change in Cowboix Hevvven. The lighting turns black, the walls reveal hidden inspirational graffiti scribbles, and the soundtrack changes to a heavy metal song filled with wholesome, endearing messages.

About 30 of the songs on the jukebox were written by Meow Wolf artist Cole Wilson, each one furthering the dive bar’s narrative. Every character in the room, from the ones on stage to the small armadillo, is referenced in his lyrics.

The party doesn’t stop there. At Cowboix Hevvven, you can try your hand at a game of pool while receiving either taunts or praise from the bar’s talking shark. Wright says there’s a camera above the pool table that tracks the motion of the balls as people play. It reads how a player is doing, and the shark comments on their performance in real time. Although the stage may seem like just a funky setup, it’s actually a fully functioning system constructed with high-quality sound reinforcement gear. It’s only disguised as old, beat-up speaker enclosures.

But we won’t give every little secret away—it’s up to you to discover all the wonders of the mysterious Radio Tave world for yourself.