Vision
Real Human Business will create fully immersive environments for exploration and play, while cultivating a community hub for artists and visitors. Immersive art satisfies the trending desire to seek experiences over material possessions, while providing the audience an outlet for inquiry, exploration, stretching the imagination, and their own creative desires.
Our long term vision is a permanent location in Travis County for rotating immersive art exhibits, with continuity established between exhibits by narrative and performance. In addition to the interactive exhibits, we will have a stage for theater, music, and community events. We ultimately would like to develop a learning center to teach curious members of the community various artistic and fabrication disciplines.
Our first public event will debut this November during the West Austin Studio Tours at our studio on Airport Boulevard. Here we will utilize 700 square feet to create an immersive experience. Divided into four separate spaces, viewers will explore a world-building narrative as they interact with the elements of each room.
Who we are
We are a group of artists, creatives, and business people with a vision for an interactive community space here in Austin, Texas. Together we have in-depth experience in a wide variety of mediums, with an emphasis on interaction and audience engagement. In addition to our individual artistic practices and business ventures, we have worked with several large scale immersive arts spaces on vision, aesthetic, structural design, and fabrication.
Our Team
Ilya Pieper
She/They. Ilya is a born and raised Austinite, who loves to build strange objects, learn how everything works, and fix broken machines. As a fabricator by trade, she uses a multitude of materials, technique, robots, and imagination to create a vast array of pieces. She strives for high quality detail and understanding of materials, and uses these understandings to build large, interactive pieces. Ilya thrives on creating ways in which we as humans can experience playful interaction with art and with other humans. Through the intersection of art and technology, she strives to create pieces that make humans feel smaller and more childlike, and which require movement and interactivity to fully experience.
Nathan Kandus
He/Him. Nathan has been in the professional art world since 2010, recieving several grants for large scale public work. He ran a fabrication business where he was responsible for multiple teams and concurrent projects of up to $250,000 and was the lead structural designer for Otherworld, a 30,000 square foot immersive space in Columbus Ohio. He currently runs a CAD business where he focuses on structural and aesthetic design for large scale artistic and architectural projects. His experience has given him a firm understanding of the requirements for a robust and interactive space, with special attention to accessibility, engagement, budgeting, municipal code, and safety.
Kade Conklin
She/Her. Kade knows no boundaries in developing a diverse skill set spanning over a decade as a professional maker and artist. Whether it is custom fabrication, prop making, large/small scale sculpting, production/set design, facilitating operations or detail oriented art conservation for corporate collectors, Kade continues to gain new opportunities based on the professional quality of work that is associated with her output. With a background working with immersive spaces and audiences of all sizes she plans to merge her talents for sculptural translation and performance to offer the community a collaborative field of experience focused on cultivating new shared adventures.
Harvey English
He/Him. Harvey has a focus on combining the idea of community and perspective through transformative and immersive design. Since 2016 he has operated his own multimedia fabrication company that has worked for entities like AT&T, RedBull, MeowWolf as well as many other satisfied clients. He has participated in several successful non-profit teams that produced immersive and informative events: TEDxHouston 2010-2016, Design Mentor at TEDxYouth@Austin 2013-2018, SXSW:Create 2013-2016, Board Member at Future: TBD 2017-2018. From 2018-2022 Harvey was the Metal Design and Fabrication Lead on the team that built Otherworld Ohio. The future is what we make it, so make it good!
Bailey Moore
They/Them. Bailey co-owns The Wooden Nickel Carnival (TWNC), an interactive experience for private and public events which transports participants to a 1920’s Big Top where they interact with various games and host characters. Bailey is the logistical and financial manager of TWNC, and her and Ilya work together to sculpt the vision, narrative, and interactions which blur the line between performance and audience. They work as the production manager for a variety of production companies in Austin, and for the past 10 years has also worked on story, production, and character development for Camp Half Blood. Further, Bailey writes, edits, and produces the podcast Memory Static.
Traveling nowhere but Earth
