Category: Beach

Beach Bum’s Magic Game Room

~ mehopper

‘Tis the season for games!

At least it is for me, because I update my “fun” pages every year around this time.

Of course, the game page is the most fun to do.

While I was doing research for upgrading the history section of the page, I stumbled upon this awesome article published in 1972 that has a ton of neat history about the game Spacewar and a lot of other “computing” related things as well.

Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums (Stewart Brand, Rolling Stone)

I loved the word “bum” in the title of the article so much, I decided to use it in the title of this new “Web World” that I made to showcase some neat interactive “game” related experiences.

Touch the 360° image to begin exploring

If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.

Enjoy!

Find out more about the games …

Hike, Wander & Walk-in the Web!

~ mehopper

Welcome to Web Worlds@Cosma!

The pages of Cosma have links to many thousands of the best resources on the Web.

Immersive 3D and 360° experiences are among the most valuable types of resources, and so there are links to thousands of them distributed across the hundreds of pages on the Web site.

The Web Worlds@Cosma are thematic 360° images with visual links to a sample of ten to twenty of the best Immersive 3D and 360° experiences on the Web for a specific subject.

There are many Web Worlds distributed across the pages on the Cosma Web site.

The Web World below is a special one with links to many of the others.

There are hundreds of immersive 3D and 360° experiences to explore!

Click on objects to see 3D and 360° experiences, and click doorways to go to other Web Worlds.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

If you’ve been following Cosma, then you know that Web Worlds have been evolving over the course of the last year. Continue reading below to learn the story behind them.

———————–
New Worlds, Old Ways@MEHopper

The story of Web Worlds began while I was updating my MEHopper Web site last summer.

I had been playing around with virtual home staging software and noticed that some of the spaces looked as if they were generated in the virtual world SecondLife. It was neat to see that “nearly” photorealistic 360° images could be generated and exported from that system.

I’ve used SecondLife to create Knowledge Places for decades, and I knew that it was now possible to take and download 360° photos, but I hadn’t gotten around to trying it yet.

I finally got inspired to do it and started with (re)creating my MEHopper Gallery Toy World. Toy Worlds are dioramas created with dollhouse furniture and other miniature objects that are photographed with a RICOH THETA S 360° Camera. The resulting 360° photos are posted on Kuula to overlay links to the Web.

Sure enough, I was able to take a 360° picture in SecondLife and upload it to Kuula to add links in the same way that I had for the Toy World. The result was this new MEHopper Gallery.

Click on the pictures to read posts about when and where they were taken.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

———————–
Web Worlds@New Media Museum

The experiment was successful enough that I decided to try my hand at another one.

This time it was for a space for my New Media Museum Web site. I had experimented with making virtual museums using my own museum’s content, but this time the goal was to create an interface to other computer museums.

This goal also inspired me to resurect my idea of “Magic Doors” from my work in SecondLife. You can read about the history of them on the Knowledge Objects page.

M.E.Hopper's Magic Window in SecondLife 2006
M.E.Hopper's Magic Window Farm in SecondLife 2006

The result of this experiment was the Computer Museums Lobby below, and you can read the story about why this came about in this post on my New Media Museum Web site.

Touch the 360° image to begin exploring, objects to learn about them, “i”s to learn about the museums, and doors to enter the virtual museums.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

It was around this time that it dawned on me that Web Worlds was a good term for describing the 3D interfaces that I was creating in SecondLife and Kuula to make visual links to other immersive 3D and 360° experiences on the Web. I did some research and found that the term had been used to describe virtual worlds on the Web before, and so I decided that it was the right term to use for what I was doing.

———————–
Web Worlds@Cosma

It wasn’t long after the term Web Worlds stuck that I decided Cosma needed some of them.

One major goal of Cosma is to have 3D interfaces for spatial Knowledge Navigation of the resources on Cosma and other Web sites. The history of this work is on the Worlds page.

There are currently a series of Toy Worlds that serve as 360° visual interfaces for the major content areas of Cosma. There is also a Cosma Welcome Area Toy World on the front page of Cosma that has links to the others.

However, there are some content areas that don’t have Toy Worlds. That’s because I never got around to making them, and this has bugged me for awhile. Web Worlds struck me as a way to remedy the situation.

The idea of “Magic Doors” as links to other immersive 3D and 360° experiences came in handy, too. I’ve been adding links to immersive 3D and 360° experiences on the pages of Cosma for about five years, and there are thousands of them distributed across the Web site. Unfortunately, few people notice them because the links to amazing experiences blend in with more mundane links (Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Open Courseware, JSTOR etc.). I decided that Web Worlds with visual links could be a way to bring more attention the links to immersive 3D and 360° experiences.

I happened to be updating the Transportation pages, and it was one of the content areas with no Toy World. I also happened to have tons of cool objects in SecondLife to use for the job (Cars, Trains, Boats, Planes etc.). It wasn’t long before Transit Paradise was born.

Touch the 360° image to begin exploring, touch the objects and doors to enter virtual 360° experiences, and touch “i”s to learn about the experiences.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

One limitation of my approach to making Web Worlds reared it’s ugly head, though.

You can only cram so many doors and objects into a single 360° photo.

This result was that there wasn’t enough room for all of the Transportation content, and I decided that Space Transportation needed to go into a separate Web World.

I was also updating the Space pages at the time and decided to address another weakness. While the existing Solar Extremes Toy World was a fine interface for the Solar System pages, there were some pages related to Astronomy that weren’t included in it.

Ultimately Space Transportation and Astronomy were combined into Space Depot.

Touch the 360° image to begin exploring, touch the objects and doors to enter virtual 360° experiences, and touch “i”s to learn about the experiences.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

Soon after that I was working on the Library page and saw experiences there begging for attention. The Great Libraries Antechamber resulted, and the post Little, Big, Old, Spooky Libraries explains more about it.

———————–
Hike the Web!

November 17th is National Take a Hike Day, and I planned a post to highlight some virtual hikes on the Web. A Web World with doors to those and some parks seemed like a nice idea, and so Hiking Trails Hall came into being.

I was also updating the pages in the Nature section of Cosma around that time, and I thought it would be good to make Web Worlds to emphasize the links to experiences quietly lurking about on those pages.

For example, there were links to 3D tours of Natural History Museums on the Dinosaur page, and so a Web World for accessing Natural History Museums seemed like a “should do.”

The Plant, Flower and Tree pages had links to some lovely Botanical Gardens, so Botanical Gardens Orangery was an obvious choice for another Web World.

There were many links to fun experiences on the Animal pages that needed attention. I also happened to already have some very cute animals in my inventory in SecondLife, so Critter’s Hollow was a no-brainer.

Finally, I created this Nature Center to integrate and access the four separate Web Worlds and introduced it in the Hike the Web post.

Touch doors and objects to enter 360° virtual experiences, touch “i”s to learn more, and touch arrows to go to other areas of the Nature Center.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

———————–
Beach Bum Break

Then came January, in New England, and this year was worse than usual! 🙁

I’m a hopeless “beach person.” That’s why there’s even a Beach page on Cosma.

I couldn’t go visit beaches with warm weather, so making Enchanted Beach Hut, Enchanted Beach Shack and the Enchanted Beach House below were therapy. You can read about it in My Enchanted Beach Houses post.

Touch doorways to visit 360° experiences, and touch posters and objects to find out more.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

It turned out that my beach adventures weren’t just therapy — they also inspire the design of the largest Web Worlds creation so far …

———————–
Wander the Web@Wanderlust!

Later in January I got busy slogging through updating and expanding the “World” pages (Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, Antarctica and their many children).

Years ago I made an arm-chair Travel Lounge Toy World. It was okay, but it didn’t showcase many immersive experiences.

In fact, there were so many links to fantastic experiences on the pages that I was updating, a single Web World wasn’t going to be enough. There ended up being six Web Worlds (Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Antarctica).

Notice that I loved my Enchanted Beach House so much, I repurposed it for all of them. Then, as with the Nature Center, I made a central Web World to access the others. Voila! The result was Wanderlust Travel Villa!

Touch doorways to visit 360° experiences, and touch posters to find out more.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

———————–
Walk-in-Web

Earlier in February, after the extravaganza that was Wanderlust, I wasn’t sure that I would be up to making more Web Worlds any time soon. Then I was updating the Arts & Entertainment pages and realized a few things.

First, I don’t spend nearly enough time on them, and I don’t add that content to the other pages as much as I should either. I need to fix that.

Second, my earlier Walk-in-Art Toy World was kind of pathetic, and it didn’t have links to great art museums that you can visit on the Web.

Of course, that just wouldn’t do at all, so welcome to Walk-in-Art & Museums.

Touch the art and doorways to visit 360° experiences.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

———————–
One World to Rule Them All

After reading the story above, I hope you can see why I needed to make a single Web World to access the others. It became too unwieldy to find all of the Web Worlds distributed across the Cosma Web site, and old fashioned text links to them would be too boring and not in the spirit of why I made them.

I hope you enjoy using Web Worlds@Cosma to Hike, Wander and Walk-in the hundreds of 3D and 360° experiences that you can find through Cosma Web Worlds Welcome Area!

Enjoy!
— M. E. Hopper

Enchanted Beach Houses

~ mehopper

I live in the Northeast, and I hate January!

I know it’s “almost” February, but I’m not a huge fan of that either.

This is the view outside my window right now.

There’s more winter left than I can take, no matter what the ground hog says this weekend.

Look at my weekend forecast from yesterday.

What the heck is freezing spray advisory anyway? I had to look it up on Wikipedia.

Freezing Spray Advisory is issued by the National Weather Service to warn sea vessels and sometimes road vehicles near the shoreline that accumulation of freezing water droplets and icing due to a combination of cold suspended droplets, wind, and cold air, so vessel movement is possible, however, accumulations are not expected to reach rates of 2 cm per hour, or else a heavy freezing spray watch, warning or a specific notice would be issued. — Wikipedia

Lovely.

I guess I should be grateful that it’s not a heavy freezing spray warning, right?

Somehow I just can’t muster that gratitude.

Being the beach person that I am, it’s at times like this that I do what I’ve dubbed “beachscrolling” — it’s a bit like doomscrolling, but far less depressing.

For example, my favorite walk between King’s Beach and Nahant Beach looks like this now.

So I go visit various web pages where I’ve posted this 360° image that I took years ago.

When I go to walk at Revere Beach, this is what it looks like at the Wonderland MBTA Station.

Here’s a view from the South end of the beach.

That’s when I get a bit of joy out of re-visiting this 360° image that I took a few summers ago.

Finally, sometimes I get bored with my own still pictures of local beaches. That’s when I start beachscrolling on YouTube looking for other people’s 360° videos of beaches that I loved visiting in the past. This is probably more aptly dubbed “beachstrolling.”

Here’s a 360° video by Ryan Kawailani Ozawa for beachstrolling on Waikiki Beach.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Ryan Kawailani Ozawa (YouTube Channel)

Last week I got a little carried away, though.

I decided it would be more visceral to have a 3D interface for beachstrolling.

Here’s an imaginary hut that I hacked together on Waikiki Beach.

Just click the doorway to take a beachstroll.

If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.

Now that’s a break from winter in New England!

One problem, though.

I love to beachstroll on South Beach, too.

Here’s a 360° video from YouTube for doing that.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

vr360videos (YouTube Channel)

There’s just one door in my tiny beach hut.

What to do?

Make a beach shack with more doors, of course!

If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.

I was happy with my new digs for a few days.

Then I happened to be updating all of the country pages on Cosma, and I came across a bevy of 360° YouTube videos showing awesome beaches in Australia. Here are a few of them.

Sydney Bondi Beach (SouthernCross VR, YouTube 360° Video)
Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia (Tourism Australia, YouTube 360° Video
Bells Beach Drone Interactive Flight. (Spin 360-3D, YouTube 360° Video)

That beach shack got an(other) upgrade!

Welcome to my Enchanted Beach House!

If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.

If you get bored with my set list and want to go somewhere else, here is how to do it.

Start by picking a beach. It can be one you’ve been to yourself, or any other one.

You can find plenty of great U.S. beaches on Stephen Leatherman’s Dr. Beach website. If you’re feeling more adventuresome, then you can take your pick from the best beaches in the world using CNN Travel’s Worlds Best Beaches website. They have an Interactive Map to help you find a great beach for “beachstrolling.”

Once you know where you want to go, then go to YouTube and put in the name of the beach followed by “360°.” Voilà, you will probably have plenty of gist for beachstrolling.

So a few things happened during my adventures in beachstrolling this week.

One of those things is that I got inspired to add a new category of links called “Fun in the Sun” to the country pages on Cosma.

In addition, I was listening to the radio and heard these lyrics to the song A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman.

There’s a house we can build
Every room inside is filled
With things from far away
The special things I compile
Each one there to make you smile
On a rainy day
— Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

Now that was food for thought, and look what happened after that …

Welcome to Wanderlust Magic Travel Villa!!!


You can also explore it on Kuula.

Happy beachstrolling … and other travels 😉

Find out more about beaches, travel and the World…

Americas Canada, United States, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina
Europe United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece
Africa Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, Madagascar
Asia India, China, Japan
Oceania Australia, New Zealand
Polar Regions Arctic, Antarctica

Beachy Adventures

~ mehopper

Hello, it’s been awhile.

You may have noticed that there haven’t been as many posts on Cosma as there used to be. There are a few reasons for this, but a big one is that, with an old project like Cosma, the focus on different parts of it must shift over time.

Last year’s focus began with cleaning up and expanding the content on the pages. The previous formatting wasn’t great, and there were quite a lot of broken links. They were pretty mangy, and it was time to deal with it.

Then the abrupt discontinuation of the 360° image hosting service called RoundMe required an additional focus on recoding and posting all of the Toy Worlds. You can see all of the re-posted Toy Worlds on Kuula.

Here is the main entry to the new version of Toy Worlds. Click on objects to find out about them. Use the menu or doors to visit other Toy Worlds.

While all of that was going on, the posts (which I call Adventures), a major priority for so long, fell by the wayside. Once upon a time there were over 200 of them that had been accumulating since 2016 when Cosma moved to WordPress after Wikispaces shut down (there were hundreds more posts there that were written over ten years and have never been re-posted here). Many posts on this site were outdated, and a lot of the YouTube videos were broken. I decided that it would be better to hide them until I had time to currate and repost them.

So, the time to focus on posts has arrived. Watch for many old and new “Adventures” to (re)appear in the semi-near-future.

I decided to start with (re)posting some “Beachy Things.” This isn’t because they’re all that central to the content of Cosma. They are not.

It’s just because whenever I start to work on something for Cosma, I tend to start with things that relate to my personal art and adventures, and those tend to be focused on beachy things. I attribute this to the undue influence of my pesky Hopper genes.

It is no coincidence that there are pages about beaches, lighthouses and sandcastles.

One of my first Toy Worlds was also a silly little beach scene. Here it is.

I first introduced that in this post called, not surprisingly, The Beach.

Here are other “beachy” posts that I spiffed up.

Beach Gazes
Gone Beaching!
Catch Some Waves!
Sand Art

I hope you have enjoyed this beachy break. If it has inspired you to visit a beach, either virtually or in real life, then check out CNN’s A Year of the World’s Best Beaches and Dr. Beach to find more sea, sand and sun.

Happy Beaching!

Sand Art

~ mehopper

The last few weeks have been an odd mix of work and play for me.

On the one hand, I’ve been hard at work on a project that I’ll share here in the near future.

On the other hand, I’ve also been somewhat obsessed with sand sculptures.

This is because one of my favorite ways to take a break is to go for a walk on my nearest beach, and that happens to be a place called Revere Beach.

Here are some links to where you can find out about why Revere Beach is special.
How Revere Beach Became America’s First Public Beach (Edgar B. Herwick III, WGBH)
Boston’s Revere Beach: The Complete Guide (Kathryn Cirrone, Trip Savvy)

The beach is actually fairly deserted most of the time — there’s often just myself and a handful of other “beach people” walking or just soaking up some sun.

Here’s a 360° picture that I took which shows what it usually looks like there.

However, things got a lot busier the second half of July because the annual Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival ran from July 26th to July 28th, but the setup and sand delivery actually started happening a week before.

Of course, it’s fun to watch the festivities, and it’s almost impossible to refrain from taking snapshots when something like this happens on your home turf.

Here’s a short slide show of some shots that I took of the festival.

Here are my pictures of my favorite sculptures. Click the gallery for a slide show.

Normally I would have stopped there, but then I got an idea for a project stuck in my head that then took on a life of its own.

You see, as much as I love watching the festival unfold, it also strikes me as bittersweet. It is at the height of summer when preparations start in mid-July, but then the sculptures stay on display for weeks and slowly melt until bulldozers come and wipe them away in mid-August.

To me, the sculptures serve as sort of a metaphor for the short, sweet existence of summer. When they are being built and displayed, summer is in its full glory. Then the crowds leave, the sculptures deteriorate, and by the time they are gone, summer is almost gone too. Schools are starting, Halloween decorations are in stores, and the only thing anyone talks about is Fall.

So, I became obsessed with instantiating this perspective in time-lapses of the sculptures.

For example, here’s a slideshow with photos that I took to create a time-lapse of this year’s Center Sculpture showing its full life cycle from before it was born until it’s demise.


 
Here are time-lapses of just some of my other favorite sculptures.

 
There are some more time-lapse videos like these on a longer version of this post that I did for my personal blog From Sand to Sand.

Now, if you’re like me, you think of all of this as being about sandcastles, even though there were no “real” sandcastles this year — the closest thing was the sculpture of Notre Dame.

I admit to being just a tad disappointed that no one decided to build a sandcastle of some sort, even though it probably would have been judged as trite if they did.

That’s why I felt a bit of joy when further down the beach I saw a gentleman building a small, honest-to-goodness sandcastle.

It turns out that he was doing it to promote a cute little product called Create A Castle. Here’s a video about their kit, and there a number of others on their YouTube Channel.

TTPM Toy Reviews (YouTube Channel)
TTPM Toy Reviews (Official Website)

While I was poking around for information about Create a Castle and other related resources for this project, it really dawned on me that building things with sand, or sand art and play as Wikipedia calls it, has evolved from a child’s activity into an industry.

For example, a gentleman named Andy Hancock offers Sandcastle Building Lessons on South Padre Island in Texas. He has posted a whole YouTube Playlist.

Then, of course, Revere Beach isn’t the only place that hosts sand festivals and competitions — there are a ton of them around the country and the world.

The 10 Best Sandcastle Competitions in America (Kim Windyka Kim Windyka, Fodors)

Fun stuff!

Now that I’ve gotten documenting and sharing the demise of sand structures, I need to get back to work on that project that I’m preparing to release soon.

That doesn’t mean that I won’t be taking a few breaks to visit the beach, though.

Here’s the thing. Summer doesn’t officially end until the Autumnal Equinox on September 23rd. It may be on the wane, but there are still weeks left. Don’t let it go before its time. There is still plenty of time to enjoy some good old traditional warm weather activities like cookouts and visits to the beach.

I intend to do that, and I hope you will too 🙂

Happy Summer, Still!

Find out more about Sandcastles and Beaches …

Gone Beaching!

~ mehopper

It’s high summer here in North America, and it’s also the time for “official” national holidays, so a lot of people are hanging up their proverbial gone fishing signs.

However, I tend to be more the type to hang up a gone beaching sign.

Since I live in the Boston area, and I’m also a North Shore type, that means that when I’m feeling lazy, I grab the Blue Line (featured in the movie Next Stop Wonderland) and head up to Revere Beach that’s known for being “the first public beach” in the country.

In case you’ve never been, here’s a 360° image I took there with my handy dandy Ricoh Theta S 360° Camera — if you click and look around, you’ll see the iconic Kelly’s Roast Beef.

Here’s a another 360° image that I took with a better view of the beach.

Revere is fun to cruise the first day of Spring, or if you’re into world class sand sculptures.

However, the truth be known, I’m more of a “further up” the North Shore type.

My favorite thing to do is to head up to Nahant Beach.

Here’s a 360° picture that shows where I walk from Nahant Beach to King’s Beach.

Here’s another 360° snap of my favorite place to soak up some sun.

So I hope that this has inspired you to find your inner beach bum, as well as find the best sea, sand and sun near you so that you can kick back, relax and experience some real sand between your toes too 🙂

Find out more about beaches …

Catch Some Waves!

~ mehopper

Want a quick mini-vacation? Check out this 360° video of tuberiding.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Waveor Company (YouTube Channel)
Waveor Company (Official Website)

It’s beautiful, but as you looked around, did you notice that there’s no surfer in the video?

I didn’t realize, at first, that it’s a promo for a game called Virtual Surfing. So, while it’s awesome that it’s so realistic, it’s not real.

On the other hand, there are a couple of fun 360° videos of real tuberiding on YouTube.

Here’s one with Ollie O’ Flaherty tuberiding off of Ireland’s Cliffs of Moher.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Wild Atlantic Way, Discover Ireland (YouTube Channel)
Wild Atlantic Way, Discover Ireland (Official Website)

If you are a surfer and want to do this yourself, then here’s an article where surfing pros share their favorite places to go tuberiding.

The Best Tubes on Earth According to Experts (Ashel Pierson, Surfline)

If you’re not a surfer, but would like to be one, then here are some helpful links to get you started catching waves …

Surfology: How to walk on water in 7 easy steps (Surfline)
Surfology: Surf School Directory (Surfline)
Surf Schools: A Guide to Learn How to Surf (Surfer Today)
Top 10 Surf Schools (National Geographic)
10 of the best surfing schools in the world (Jennifer Hudson, The Guardian)

Hang ten!

If you enjoy adventures with a side of adrenaline then check out these other posts …

Heights!
Up, Up and Away!
Wingsuit Rush!
Go for a Fly!
NYC Highs
Extreme Biking, Artfully!
Zip the World!

Find out more about sports and adventure …

The Beach

~ mehopper

One long term goal of Cosma is to include an entertaining, interactive and immersive 3D Interface. There are already “demos” of what that might look like, but none of the available technologies are ideal, so there is no full implementation of the vision (yet).

The most recent demo is a fun little Toy World that started out as an experiment in using a 360° image as a “previs” tool for a full implementation in Unity3D.

Click on objects to find out about them.

You can also explore this Toy World on Kuula.

Stay tuned for more fun experiments soon!

Find out more on the Worlds and Worlds Challenge pages …

See also Beach, Lighthouse and Sandcastle

Dive-in-Art

~ mehopper

Check out this video from the Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival.

FloridaKeysTV (YouTube Channel)
FloridaKeysTV (Official Website)

There are a ton of YouTube videos about the annual fest, and here’s an article about it.

Watch An Underwater Music Festival ‘Make Waves’ for Reef Protection (Florida Keys News Bureau)

You might think that this event is fairly unique, but it turns out that there are lots of divers who are also fans of the arts, so “arts under the sea” is not nearly as rare as you might think. For example, underwater art museums are thriving. Here’s an article about where you can find your nearest “dive-in” art museum.

Underwater Museums of the world: Immerse Yourself in Art in the Depths of the Sea (Ukranian Shipping Magazine)

Here is a video about the Museo Subacuático de Arte (MUSA) mentioned in the article.

Dmitriy (YouTube Channel)

There are even some artists who are specifically known for exhibiting underwater. The photographer Andreas Franke once made news by staging an art exhibit on the Vandenberg battleship that was deliberately sunk off the coast of Key West to create the second largest man made reef on the planet (watch the Vanderberg sink). Here’s a 360° video of the exhibit.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Subsurface Media (YouTube Channel)

The pictures from the exhibit were brought up to create a landlubber’s exhibit. Franke moved on to create an exhibit on the SS Stavronikita off of Barbados, and then he went on to create another exhibit on the USS Mohawk CGC off the coast of Sanibel Island.

Barbados Property Search (YouTube Channel)

Ghostly Underwater Art Gallery Breathes New Life to Sunken Ship (Sheena McKenzie, CNN)

Jason deCaires Taylor is another artist who is known for his underwater work, but he specializes in sculpture rather than photography. Here’s a TED talk where Taylor provides insights about what motivates his work.

TED (YouTube Channel)
TED (Official Website)

The eclectic multimedia artist Doug Aitken worked with LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art to construct a large-scale underwater installation entitled Underwater Pavilions off of Catalina Island. Here’s an official video from MOCA about the work.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (YouTube Channel)
The Museum of Contemporary Art (Official Website)

Here’s a cool 360° video that gives a great sense of what it’s like to visit the exhibit.
Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Superswell VR (YouTube Channel)

The current that tends to run through all of the underwater artist’s work is the appreciation and preservation of the Earth’s ocean environments, so please share this to support their work!

Here are links to some other, related posts on Cosma.

Walk-in-Art
Art Revisited
Leonardo Lately
Magical Paintings
Into Van Gogh
Walk-in-Art & Museums!

Enjoy, but beware, it’s easy to get lost in 360° art!

Find out more about the arts and the ocean …

Beach Gazes

~ mehopper

You know those “virtual fireplace videos” that you can play to feel all warm and cozy? Yes, there’s even a YouTube Channel for that 🙂

Well, there are some 360° Videos made to serve a similar purpose for a summertime feeling, so you can kick back, relax and imagine some sand between your toes anytime you want.

The best one I found was this beauty from Australia.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Australia (YouTube Channel)
Australia (Official Website)

You can also find a number of other nice 360° videos on their YouTube Channel.

Now if you prefer the real thing, here’s a video for that.

TenPlus.TV (YouTube Channel)
TenPlus.TV (Official Twitter)

You can always check with good old Dr. Beach to find the best sea, sand and sun near you (or further afield if you’re very motivated).

Find out more about Beaches …