Enter!

Because I cannot package down a museum to send to you, I thought that a VR art gallery would be a good alternative. Upon clicking the link, you’ll notice that the you’re standing in what looks like a forest — I used this backdrop to show the amazingly large amount of biodiversity there is in forests, with many different organisms occupying so many different niches. Moreover, I also wanted this forest theme to act as a callback to Darwin’s time in the Galapagos, amongst the flora and fauna of the region which was so influential to him in his monumental work, The Origin of Species. In fact, all of the different gallery rooms are specifically themed, but more on that later.

To navigate the VR art gallery, you use the arrow keys on your keyboard, and to orient different viewing angles on the screen, you can click and grab a region using your cursor. To enter one of the rooms, simply navigate to the door and go “in” — the page should automatically reload to now show you the inside of that room/the inside of that gallery. Once you’re in a room, you can navigate through the door of the next room (the room names are written above the doors), or you can exit to go back to the main forest that you first entered. Happy exploring!

Elaboration about rooms and room themes:

There are four different VR art gallery rooms for you to explore, and all of them are themed differently.

Room one, 1500s and 1600s: This room holds art associated with the scientific discoveries made during the early days of scientific discovery. To match this, the room is themed with brown flooring and arches as decorations, as a way to represent the prehistoric Earth. Our understanding of science in this era, though decently complex, was still very early — reminiscent of the early Earth itself.
Room two, 1700s: This room has art associated with the scientific discoveries made during the 1700s, as we began to understand more about the world around us with more accuracy and complexity. In this era, we began to have many individuals speculate about how things in their current state came to be, and their precursors. This era also saw many social movements, such as the American and French Revolutions. This room is themed to resemble a desert, as a means to show that our understanding of the world around us in a scientific manner was still a bit “dry.”
Room three, 1800s: This era was incredibly important for science, and the art reflects this moment in time. Here, we had the publication of the Origin and, which was a monumental paradigm shift in science and society. There were so many scientific discoveries made here, and this time period really exemplifies a goldmine of science. Hence, the room theme is “goldmine.”
Room four, 1900s to now: This era is more modern, and the art pieces also somewhat reflect that. This era saw science become even more precise — we see the identificaton of DNA’s structure in this era, as well as the foundation of many philosophy of science texts that allow us to see scientific discovery in a whole new light. To reflect this futurism, this room is themed to resemble “tron.”

Please note, however: due to the nature of the code, the doors don’t appear in chronological order when you first get to the VR Art Gallery landing/home page. However, the room names are above each respective door, so navigation is still fine. Also note, if you enter a room, and things seem to be moving on their own, just refresh the page! Thank you! Click the “VR” button at the bottom right corner to go into fullscreen mode!

This website was created by adapting this github theme significantly, and the VR art gallery was created by adapting this github program significantly, too. Though I used these github sources for guidance, I complied all of my own markdown files, and did all of my own coding to ensure that the HTML for both this website and the VR Art Gallery worked adequately.