PRESS
2025
- San Antonio Express-News, Chef Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin debuts Jue Let bar at Pearl with fortune-telling flair, November 21, 2025
- CultureMap San Antonio, Jue Let bar makes dazzling debut in San Antonio's Pearl district, November 20, 2025
- CNET, I Can't Wait for New York's Interdimensional Meow Wolf Arcade, March 10, 2025
- The New York Times, Take a Weird Walk Through Meow Wolf’s Expanding Universe, April 7, 2025
"The Divine Intervention is a refreshing citrusy sip, but the drink itself is only half the fun. The beverage comes along with a Chinese I Ching coin which serves as a token for the fortune-telling machine, dubbed The Cabinet of Changes. The machine is a one-off designed in partnership with Austin-based hardware and software developer Alan Watts of Meow Wolf fame."
"Still, we’ll guess the bestseller will be the sprightly Divine Intervention. Each cocktail comes with an I-Ching coin that guests can drop in the Cabinet of Changes, an interactive fortune-telling machine built in collaboration with Meow Wolf artist Alan Watts."
"It's not typical that you get news breaking to you via an '80s video game on your phone. But that's Meow Wolf for you. In a little pixelated game that looks like the old arcade game Double Dragon, gangs and police officers come after you."
"Visitors can make their own sounds using conventional instruments like bongo drums in the station’s recording studio or unexpected interfaces such as small statues of imps or an elaborate control panel that is home to a lost, now digitized, house cat that will meow and purr if you push the right buttons."
2023
- Texas Monthly, Meow Wolf is ready for Texas. Is Texas ready for Meow Wolf?, July 14, 2023
- Los Angeles Times, Meow Wolf is ready for Texas. Is Texas ready for Meow Wolf?, July 6, 2023
- Dallas Observer, The 10 Best Tips, Clues and Leads To Discover the Story of Meow Wolf's The Real Unreal, July 17, 2023
In a constructed alleyway, a graffitied image of four numbers in sign language belies the code to a nearby ATM, which is itself connected to a light-up piano elsewhere in the exhibit. An arcade features original and inventive games designed by indie developers from Texas, as well as an anthropomorphized vending machine that has beef with the aforementioned ATM.
In Grapevine, you may find an ATM that’s not actually a money-dispensing device. You can uncover its secrets — if you can find the hidden password.
One of the charms of all Meow Wolf attractions is how they play out things that seem ordinary in some extraordinary ways, and few pieces fit that description better than this automatic teller.
2021
- The Houston Chronicle, Meow Wolf in Denver transports visitors to a wild galaxy, September 17, 2021
- Sightlines, Northern-Southern gallery moves downtown. For a while., September 9, 2021
'I learn that the residents of C Street don’t trust politics and elect a new mayor every 20 minutes. A glowing voting machine counts down time before the next vote and beckons visitors to cast a ballot.'
To wit: Northern-Southern commissioned artist Alan Watts to make a count-down clock for its Brazos Street space. The clock displays the number of days left until the building must be vacated and it will remain in the space for the duration.
2019
- Interiors, Interview with Alex Digerlando, 2019
- Deadline, For ‘Maniac,’ Production Designer Alex DiGerlando Crafts Retrofuturistic Look That Is “A Very Hard Thing To Verbalize” To This Day, June 11, 2019
'The twinkling lights of the GRTA, along with her animated face and her teardrop were all done practically and we hired Alan Watts, an artist with a background in programming, to make all of that happen. He sat off-camera and ran codes to essentially puppeteer her actions.'
'It’s funny, Patrick wrote it as if the computer was blinking and smiling at Owen. I don’t know that he necessarily meant that so literally, but we found this programmer in Austin, and I was like, “Could you program the lights to be animated?”'
2018
- The New Yorker, The Design of "Maniac" Offers an Uncanny Imitation of Life, September 21, 2018
'Dominating the laboratory and overwhelming the visual scheme is a grand and rickety mainframe: an artificial intelligence that has developed emotions. This is an endearingly ridiculous machine, one whose buttons selectively light up to impersonate a woman's face.'
2017
- Make: Zine, The Vision Gland Collective Is Bringing a Weird, Wonderful 12-Room Project to Maker Faire Austin
- Make: Zine, The Good People of Maker Faire Austin 2017, May 18, 2017
"They unveiled their first installation, The Vessel behind the Austin Tinkering School during East Austin Studio Tour to the delight of the community."
"Alan Watts is a software developer that likes to get 3D with detailed, high-finish homemade arcade games. They are gorgeous!"
2014
- Boing Boing, The Wormhole Actualization Machine
What's it like to get sucked into a black hole and travel at hypersonic speeds through a wormhole? Alan Watts built this Arduino-based psychedelic spacetime visualizer to find out.
2005
- Young Adult Library Services, "Gaming For Tech-Savvy Teens", Page 34
"Gorman collaborated with game designer Alan Watts to develop an innovative program in which teens took an active role in the creation of two video games."
2004
- TechTV: Cat's Clicks, February 2, 2004
2003
- New York Times : November 13, 2002 "Hot Technology": featured Logitech IO 3D rendering.
2002
- SXSW Tech Report, "Talking Pixels with Alan Watts and Clay Ferguson", June 28, 2002
- Austin Chronicle, "Geeks of Iron: Webmasters show their stuff", March 8, 2002
- Austin Chronicle, "Short Cuts", May 31, 2002
"Honor and bragging rights were at stake. There were two teams, celebrity judges, and 10 computers. But most important of all, there was beer."
"Alan Watts update No. 307: 16color.com's creative overlord Alan Watts has come up with an innovative way to get kids interested in his lo-res brand of Internet and filmmaking coolness."
2001
- Austin Chronicle, "Short Cuts: You may remember reading about local Web-based animator Alan Watts in this space from time to time, but you're about to be hearing a lot more about him.", April 13, 2001
- Austin Chronicle, "Short Cuts", February 16, 2001
- RES Magazine, RES 10/Ten to Watch in 2001, Vol. 4, No. 2
- Austin Chronicle, "Graffiti on the Superhighway: The Enigma of Visual Art Made for the Internet", December 28, 2001
- Austin Chronicle, Short Cuts, January 26, 2001
"Geez, does this guy ever sleep?"
"The unstoppable Alan Watts (www.16color.com) has a new project in the works, but unlike the local animator's previous online outings, this one is less about animation per se than it is about the joy of making other people look silly."
"In 1999 Watts carved out 16Color.com, where fledgling animators can download a free user-friendly workshop software called 16 Color Studio..."
"My creation turns out to require a little post-production; the seven frames tumble together so fast that test audiences have found the tragic and comic elements difficult to distinguish."
"...the man behind the popular "animate it your own damn self!" site www.16color.com...."
2000
- Austin Chronicle, "Win, Lose, or Draw 16 Color's Alan Watts Is Helping People Create or Procrastinate", August 18, 2000
- The Japan Times, "Get Shorty", March 29, 2000
- Adobe Magazine, "Hip 2 B Square", October 2, 2000
- KVUE-TV, "Click Here", August 2, 2000
"What Watts' site offers, I found, is an incredibly user-friendly template for people interested in making short (15 seconds), Web-based animations. His press release says it best: "Alan Watts dreams of ways to help people procrastinate." You don't know the half of it."
"It’s simple, ephemeral stuff, never coming to a theater near you, but that doesn’t make it any less significant. Many are entertaining cinematic haiku."
"Perhaps the most pixelated place online is 16 Color Cinema, an increasingly popular destination for lovers of lower resolutions."
"It's probably third, or second, funnest thing."
1999
- Baltimore City Paper / Kansas City Pitch / Now Toronto, "Big biz rubs out Web-A-Sketch", by Joab Jackson, April 21, 1999
- Austin American-Statesman, "Watch your back! Lawyers might be drawn to your site", by Gregory Kallenberg, April 15, 1999
"And 'this time,' he exults, 'they can't sue me!'"
"Watts is an Internet gadfly extraordinaire, a Web designer with a knack for developing projects that seem to attract lawsuits"
1998
- New York Times, Web Imitator Displeases Maker of Etch a Sketch, June 15, 1998
"Disputes over trademarks in cyberspace are common, but what sets Mr. Watts apart is his unwillingness to take the cash and run -- or at least find a new hobby"
1996
- Wired 4.09, Net Surf, September 1996
- Computerworld, alt.cw, December 16, 1996
"Web-a-Sketch's elegant design lets you submit your sketches to weekly and monthly contests in the Gallery. You can view past Galleries week by week - some of the submissions are not to be believed. Hats off to the genius behind this site"
"Thought it was hard to draw with an Etch-a-Sketch? It's even hard to do on the World Wide Web, where Web-a-Sketch resides."
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