For Meow Wolf’s 5th Exhibition, Radio Tave, I was contracted to design and program custom software for 5 Narrative Computers inside the fictitious ETNL Community Radio Station. Each computer served as the office computer for each of the 5 main characters in this exhibition’s story. The design was mean to emulate operating systems and software from the late 00’s and match the aesthetic and feeling of a community radio station that perhaps didn’t have the top-of-the-line equipment. Inspiration was drawn from Windows Media Player, Winamp, Clippy, and Windows Millenium Edition.
I created a faux operating system called Avocado OS complete with a file navigation system, an audio player, video player, instant messaging app, and a fake broadcast software. Software was created in Unity with C#. The file navigator allows visitors to sleuth through photos & videos that belong to each of the characters as well as listen to dozens of audio recordings of the radio station’s many shows. A looping radio broadcast created by the Meow Wolf team plays throughout the Radio Station. One of the narrative apps called KewCast, allows visitors to listen in to the broadcast as well as see closed captions for the audio the show their listening to. Dialoggy, drawing inspiration from Slack and AOL Instant Messenger, gives visitors the opportunity to read through conversations between all of the main characters, revealing major story elements. Rhombus, a digital assistant inspired by Clippy, gives visitors hits about what to do and clues about the story surrounding the ETNL radio station. A “Transmission Event” occurs every ~20 minutes throughout the entire exhibition. The narrative devices tie into the event with visual glitch effects that appear across the screen(s). Finally, a locked folder on the desktop can be opened if visitors can discover the secret 4-digit code using hints hidden around the exhibition. After unlocking the folder, a microcontroller serving as a mobile app beacon sends a message to anyone nearby using the mobile app to unlock additional narrative content.
Credits | Meow Wolf’s Radio Tave
