Call it an art installation, a silent music venue, a bar. A colorful, new place called Discotech is expected to open in Dallas' Victory Park in May.
Art enthusiasts might know it as the original Sweet Tooth Hotel, a pop-up art installation designed to draw millennials and Gen Zers to Victory Park as it undergoes a resurgence. In 2018, Sweet Tooth Hotel morphed into Sweet Tooth Hotel: 1955, a space-themed art installation aimed at the same crowd. Neither were meant to last. And after months of ticket sales, both closed. On purpose.
Discotech will be Sweet Tooth Hotel 3.0, with some notable changes. Discotech will be more than four times the size of Sweet Tooth Hotel after creators Cole and Jencey Keeton signed a lease next door. The original Sweet Tooth Hotel space will carry the same theme — a fake hotel lobby — and will have two hotel-like rooms that will feature rotating, solo art exhibitions.
From there, ticketholders who pay $21.99 for one hour of general admission will choose their own adventure. There will be three ways to walk into the rest of the art installation, a disco that is themed around electronic music and new media.
Jencey left her job to go full-time with this art gallery business. She says the new iteration will be an audio-visual feast, aided largely by px.lab (pronounced "pixel lab"), a company that makes art out of projected shapes and colors and audio-visual and virtual reality experiences. The Keetons partnered with Dallas-area artists at an EDM festival in late December called Lights All Night to try out some of these ideas. Lights All Night collaborators Eric Trich and Taylor Cleveland of px.lab and artist Shamsy Roomiani will also be involved with Discotech.
In one room of the Discotech, ticketholders can climb into a convertible — a real one — and "drive" it. The car won't move, but it'll look like it is based on the moving projections in the room, the organizers say.
Through much of the experience, patrons will wear headphones and participate in a silent disco, where the music syncs up with the art they're eyeing. What happens if you pull your headphones off? The room should be silent, with people dancing to the beats in their heads, Jencey says.
The Keetons expect to have three rooms with art installations, plus a bar. Another room, which costs $21 extra for a VIP ticket, will look like a celebrity's dressing room, where attendees can "become a pop star," Jencey explains. She wouldn't say much more than that; you've gotta spend the money to go in there, sonny.
All of it is expected to end up on Instagram. And that's partially the point: These so-called immersive art installations are "factories for selfie culture," we've said. They're all the rage across the world, with several pop-up shops in Dallas that have become popular among the art-loving community. They're not all created equal, of course. Our Tiney Ricciardi visited four of them in late 2018, and some, she says, "are more like glorified J.C. Penney photo backdrops than compelling works of art." Others offer interesting, real-time commentary about what art looks like today, even if that's through the lens of an iPhone camera.
"I'm excited to see it evolve," Jencey says of art installations like hers, "and I think it's an industry that doesn't really have a ceiling with the work you can present.
"And that's interesting to me, because with retail or any type of other business, you reach a certain level of 'weird,'" she says. She likes weird. And she's encouraged by the idea that people will pay to see artists' weird work.
"Let's see what people think," she says.
Discotech is expected to open May 25, 2019, at 2316 Victory Park Lane, Dallas. Tickets are on sale now and cost $21.99 to $42.99.
