My Otherworld Encounter Experience

7/8/2019

A huge "thank you" to the amazing folks at Otherworld Encounter for having us as their guests.

What do you get when you combine art, science, and fantasy. . . Otherworld Encounter . . . an immersive, hands-on, sci-fi art installation that you can experience with every single one of your five senses... and then some.

From the moment you step foot inside the exhibit, you know you are in for an interesting time. Your experience starts with a brief back story of the "project" along with a short presentation to get you in the right frame of mind to get the most out of your experience.

Otherworld Encounter Nashville July 2019

Once the curtains open, you are transported to a whooole other world of sights, sounds, smells, colors, shapes, textures....everywhere you look, something new and vibrant catches your eye. You can swing in the trees or skip rope with a friendly space creature! Oh, and make sure you dig through the glitter sand for a clue. (wink wink)

There are 18 total rooms to experience, each one with a different theme. You can skip rocks in a virtual pond, experience an indoor thunderstorm, sans rain, of course, or play music with unconventional instruments, and then, weave your way through an ivy covered forest to meet a very bright beetlebug.

Some rooms are even "play-able". Yes! You can "play" one of the rooms. Think: "full dome Galaga"... with you in the pilot's seat.

Otherworld Encounter invites its guests to become a part of the exhibit by leaving their mark in the form of funky chalk drawings with plenty of room for self expression. If you look closely, you might even see a secret message.

As you wind your way through the maze of different "dreams", you are urged to look for "clues", which are recurring themes and symbols you will see along the way. If you accidentally miss them, no worries, play the game at the end, beat level 10, all the clues will be there for you. Get the code right and you will be granted access to the secret room. There are tons of photo opps along they way and unlike most other artsy places, you are ENCOURAGED to take all the pics and touch all the arts!

After about 10 minutes of trying way too hard to crack the code, and after the kind attendant gave us way too many clues, we finally made access to the secret room. It was as if I was transported back in time to my teen hangout. So many cool things to see and do and experience. Worth every second of feeling "unsmart" whilst figuring out the code.

The boys and I had an amazing afternoon at Otherworld Encounter and encourage you to check it out for yourself if you're in the Nashville area, and if you're not, you can take a virtual field trip via social media postings. The encounter is running now through July 21st, 2019, and is located at the Fairgrounds. You can get more info and grab your tickets here.

A little about the amazing artists behind Nashville's OWN (Otherworld Network) in their own words. . .

"Nashville's OWN (Otherworld Network) formed in August 2018 with the combined passion of creating Nashville's first large scale immersive art experience. Thousands upon thousands of hours of work went into developing, building and operating OTHERWORLD ENCOUNTER.

With a shoestring budget, a nearly impossible timeline and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, Nashville's OWN completed it's debut exhibit at the Nashville Fairgrounds. In just over two weeks, almost 5,000 visitors experienced the magic of OTHERWORLD ENCOUNTER We will continue to pursue our dreams of providing sustainable income to the many talented artists in Nashville and beyond who have and will contribute to our experience, as we tour with OTHERWORLD ENCOUNTER to various cities.
Our ultimate goal of building a permanent operation in a much larger scale in Nashville."