Story & Lesson Highlights with James Lopez of Denver Area

James Lopez shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Good morning James, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? When was the last time you felt true joy?
I had recently created an installation for The Denver Film Festival. It was a secret pop up bar that people had to stumble into. It was designed as a sensory relaxation space for people to have a momentary reprieve from networking and sensory demanding events.

The project was a self-driven experience where you could relax and hang out. On one of the tables I had put out a bowl of gel orbeez that had no instructions, no attention brought to it. It was just present and offered as an invitation for people to enjoy. Late into the night, I randomly peaked over and two people umprompted were putting their hands into the orbeez and finding the sensory relaxation and connection between each other, giggling and interacting in a slightly different way. It truly made my night.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is James and I am an Experience Designer and magician. People often ask me what an experience designer is and it is a hard question to answer because of its ambiguity and relatively new introduction into the modern lexicon. In short, an Experience Designer creates interactive and immersive community experiences through meaningful interaction and play.

We often elevate events and experiences to deepen the interactions and make people feel seen and deeply connected to the activity beyond passive consumption. We focus attention and care on the people willing to interact and engage and reward them with transformation and connection. To create these meaningful experience’s, Experience Designers utilize a variety of tools and resources to create engagement with people. This can include technology, sensorial experiences, magic, storytelling and other interactive art forms.

The beauty of Experience Design is that it can be utilized in everything from grand scale festival design to simple 1:1 interactions. We are the glue that elevates a moment to make it have a profound and lasting impact on the guest.

In 2020, I started a company called the Exposure Project to try and express and share many of these thoughts and ideas with the world. My professional background is a magician, so I have a unique understanding of how to amaze people and make them believe in the impossible. I wanted to see how magic could be used as a philosophy and anchor for design. How we could expand magic beyond tricks and use it to create transformational experiences. Create the same feeling of a magic trick inside of other experiences.

Since then the Exposure Project has created a variety of immersive theater shows, interactive installations, and other projects that explore how to make people feel seen.

We have worked with The Denver Center For Performing Arts Off- Center, RiNo, Oddyssey Works, The Denver Film Festival, Ampersand Film Festival, Centennial Spark Program, Farm To Spaceship, amongst others providing shows, experiences, and teaching about experience design.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
My most recent long term relationship. She was the first person I think that truly saw my potential in the work and life i live now. She was a voice of confidence when I was doubting myself about the work that I do. She was encouraging, supportive, and saw what not only what it was but what it could be and how it could make an impact on others. She helped me feel seen and gave me the strength to help others feel seen.

After our relationship ended, I did feel like a different person, more confident in my work, in my voice, and how I wanted to interact with the world.

If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
There is a lot more time than now and go deeper.

When I was younger everything felt like it needed instant gratification. We lived in a world where we only saw the end result, never had to experience the struggle or growth it takes to get to the end. Social Media has exacerbated this feeling of FOMO or inferiority complex because you aren’t good at something instantly. Taking time to learn and go deep will lead to so much more amazing things.

There were a lot of things I could have done growing up, so many potential avenues to filter my creativity, but I wanted the bright shiny object immediately and lost out on so many future opportunities. Taking time and learning, growing, understanding things deeply then executing helped me create work I am proud of.

With the need for instant gratification there is this thing that still bugs me about our culture is the lack of depth. People often don’t go deep with something in favor of immediacy and spectacle. Without that deeper understanding we can’t make things better or more engaging. Taking time, learning, exploring, curating, those are the things for lasting impact that are important to me being older and wish I would have cherished more in my youth.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Spectacle is the detriment to meaningful engagement.

A lot of my friends work with large scale companies, festivals, IP’s, etc. The industry has this narrative that success is defined by large audiences, large throughput, and attaching yourself to a recognizable IP. If a million people don’t see it and are overwhelmed by it, then your work is irrelevant or still in its infancy. So then you are discouraged from exploring other avenues of connection because the industry favors spectacle.

What I don’t want people to do after one of my experiences or interacting with work I create, is to just respond to the overwhelming of senses. Things become muddled and instead of responding to the actual transformation of yourself, you are just responding to the endorphin activation in your brain. I think that we rely too much on that in our short term content development. Overwhelm the senses instead of trying to make something good. Bright and loud is the easy solution, I want to work for my audiences reaction and connection to the work and find the deeper meaning and engagement.

I also don’t want to say that spectacle is outright bad, but spectacle for the sake of spectacle creates meaningless noise instead of thoughtful engagement.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?
I struggle with this question a lot. I often find myself getting jealous of those who receive accolades and I am not. I feel like a lot of my work is the work that is paving the foundation for growth and opportunities to happen. It is giving space for others to succeed, so I should be happy to see people or organizations or concepts being seen even if it is not me getting the praise for it

Deep down, even if I don’t get the praise, I find myself being pulled back to my work exploring and questioning the things I like. because deep down, these things are part of me and my mortal exploration of this world. It just so happens to be in an industry that thrives on praise and recognition.

One of the things that I am working on and learning is to find that praise and satisfaction within myself. If am pulled to explore these things regardless of the success, than that must mean something on such a deeper and more profound level that I should continue to explore and cherish. Because we have such limited time we should be doing what we want and not worried about superficial satisfaction but the satisfaction that comes from the work. The signs of success and connection in the smallest moments. Those small transformations that have profound impact should be the one metric of success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://keepexposureasecret.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.exposure.project/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjameslopez/

Image Credits
Hannah May Photography
M Wirth Photography