Today I attended an event in the Newman Vertical Campus. I went to the Virtual Sculpture Gallery (VR Lab) at Room 6-120. It took place in a computer lab so I had expected to use the computers for something, but instead they had Google Cardboard for virtual reality and sculptures that were made from 3D printing. There was one professor and two other people who I think were students. I used the VR headset that they had connected to the laptops and could jump from sculptures that they had made. Along one side of the room were two tables filled with sculptures. There were about twenty of them lined up next to each other. Right above them was a sign that said “Don’t Touch. It took 10 hours to make me.” I found that very interesting because I did not expect it to take long to make. The professor, Joshua Whitehead, explained that it was a half semester’s worth of work. I think it took a very long time to design and figure out how to make these sculptures layered.

In the VR simulation, I was able to teleport from the sculptures and jump from one to another. One of the students that I think programmed the VR simulation, Toby, explained the things we could do with the headsets on. I was given two controllers, one for each hand. One controller contained the menu and the options of actions. The controller I held on my right hand was used to teleport and make selections from the menu. One of the menu options was to change the month (along with the day), as well as to pick what time of day it was. While I stood on a green sculpture that reminded on me a straightened out strand of DNA. When I adjusted the time of day, the green sculpture would also change colors. I looked up into the “sky” and was blinded with how bright everything was and quickly turned the time to late at night. At that time, the sky is filled with stars and the green sculpture looked more blue than green.

After trying out the VR headset, I decided to get the Google cardboard a try. Unlike the VR headset, the cardboard was not as technical because it was very literally a cardboard folded into a box with two lens inside. In order to use that one, I had to download an app on my phone called Sketchfab. Sketchfab is an app that is used to view models in 3D, virtual reality, and augmented reality. After downloading the app, I have an option to look at any of the models within the app and then I put my phone into the Google cardboard.

I learned that the class that made those sculptures was an elective class. I believe it was called Environmental Modeling or Sculpting. I did not know Baruch offered electives like that. I now know that there are many more classes and electives that I need to look into because I really enjoyed that event and I wish more people attended so that they could have appreciated the long, hard work the students put in.