An explosive experience: Corrales-based Ideum reimagines Valles Caldera eruption

In the form of sweeping darkness overtaking miles of land, a volcanic eruption more than a million years ago helped form what’s now known as Valles Caldera in New Mexico. In a couple of months, New Mexicans can watch what that explosion looked like.

Standing around a 12-foot diameter table custom created to carve out the sweeping hills of the caldera, three design and technology experts admired their handiwork as projection mapping illustrated the history of the landscape.

It’s one of dozens of projects Ideum is currently working on. The Corrales-based company specializes in immersive, interactive exhibits and has produced projects nationwide — from the interactive displays at the Albuquerque BioPark’s penguin exhibit to a Pearl Harbor exhibit in Hawaii unveiling in September.

If he had to choose a favorite project, Jim Spadaccini, founder of Ideum, said it would have to be the Ebbets Field scale model his company developed a few years ago for the Jackie Robinson Museum in New York City. So many school kids are learning about Robinson’s history with civil rights from the exhibit, he said.

“Most of what we do in the exhibit world, it’s how do you tell this story?” Spadaccini said. “And generally, for us, the other part of what we do is, how do we get people to participate, to have agency?”

The work all started in 1999 when Spadaccini founded the company. He initially based Ideum out of California but moved the company to New Mexico in 2005 while working on a Chaco Canyon project.

A couple of years later, the company focused its work on interactive touch tables, not realizing it was “sort of the worst timing ever,” Spadaccini said. It was around 2008 when financial giant Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy — a pivotal event in the Great Recession.

A National Science Foundation grant helped the company continue its operations. Save for a few pandemic-era Small Business Administration loans, Spadaccini said the company doesn’t have any outside funders.

“We’ve just been continually investing in ourselves and continuing to develop this product line,” said Spadaccini, who is also CEO and creative director for the company today.

Building and telling the story

In late July, the National Park Service will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Valles Caldera being public land. A three-day event from July 25-27 at the park will feature Ideum’s model of the Caldera as the main interactive exhibit in the Ranger Station, said Rob Demsey, Ideum senior producer and lead on the Caldera project.

As he previewed the mapping projection at Ideum’s woodworking fabrication studio in Corrales earlier this month, with smoky, billowing volcanic clouds covering the model landscape, he said the projection will be accompanied by scenic lighting and a surround sound system at the anniversary celebration.

Demsey hit another animation switch, and the following consequences of the eruption ensued: Redondo Peak rose out of the crater and water flooded the screen. Animation details of the next event — the lake draining and other peaks rising — started flickering out; Demsey explained the team still needed to animate that.

The team started conversations to get the project going in October. It’s now in the final production stage, Demsey said, and Ideum plans to install it in about a month.

The project will also feature cultural information about the land, like Native tribes’ history on it, ecology stories and scientific discoveries.

“It’s a great way to tell the geology story and do it at scale and do it in a social environment,” Spadaccini said.

Spadaccini described the Valles Caldera project as unusual in the sense “that we’re doing absolutely everything here,” including the fabrication, audio and visual systems, software design, animations, programming and more. Ideum allows companies to pick and choose what services they want.

And that’s just one side of the business.

The exhibition company also generates revenue on its hardware side, Spadaccini said, selling and renting products to hundreds of universities and museums.

In a separate Corrales facility, products like sensors, aluminum frames and metal cast bases fill a workshop space. Workers mill about, configuring wiring for touch-table technology or overseeing 3D printing operations. Ideum has 42 employees, a diverse array of experts from engineers to artists, Spadaccini said.

“We love both things. We love doing the creative work; we also love having a product line,” he said. “These things can support each other.”

The in-house product line has helped ease international supply chain worries stemming from the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, and additional tariffs imposed on most other countries.

“We wound up investing pretty heavily last year and knew we were taking a chance,” he said. “We were kind of hoping we wouldn’t have to do it, but not having to ship anything right now is huge.”

From working under clients’ budgetary constraints to drilling a hole in the ceiling of the fabrication studio so the Caldera projection would be accurate, Spadaccini described all of Ideum’s work as inventive and custom to meet any project’s needs.

“To me, that’s Ideum.”