If your mom was like mine, she never gave you $5 to waste playing those virtual reality games when they first came out.
I may have been on reduced lunch when VR hit the market, but I was on the wise to realize that all technological entertainment gets cheaper by the year. So I waited.
And now, my years of boycotting high-priced VR entertainment are at an end.
The UA Treistman Center for New Media will be hosting a free VR presentation on Monday of computer-generated, multisensory information that tracks a user in real time.
"They get to put on these stereoscopic glasses and then they see a 3-D image," said media arts graduate student Christine Scheer. "And then they can drive through the image."
Scheer was enrolled in a digital arts course called Interactivity last fall. The class' final project will be one of two works exhibited Monday. The collaborative work is entitled "Perspectives of Contradiction."
The final project assignment included programming and creating a figure in virtual space.
"I came up with my own figure," said Scheer. "My particular person was a body of a demon-alien, and the four sides of its head are different aspects of my personality."
Scheer's demon-alien will be displayed on a 6-by-8-foot wall for all to see, but could be outdone by "Desert Views, Desert Deaths," the other featured work by artist in residence, Lucy Petrovich.
Petrovich said "Desert Views, Desert Deaths" is a memorial for those who have died crossing the border.
Due to stricter enforcement of border policies, Petrovich said people are crossing at increasingly remote areas, ill-prepared for the reality that Phoenix is further than an hour's journey on foot.
"When you're new to Tucson, you start looking around to see what is affecting this area," Petrovich said. "I'm more aware of it just living here, and it's something people in the rest of the country need to hear about."
Petrovich said she is planning on entering her project into international art shows.
"One of the reasons you do this is to make people aware of the statements you're dealing with in your project," said Petrovich. "That's why people create art, and that's what I'm trying to do."
She said VR immersion allows people to explore environments created by an artist.
Those who attend the exhibit Monday will maneuver through the system by using a mouse-like device.
Users will find themselves moving through walls into eerie graveyards, then turning left and walking by newspaper clippings suspended in space.
All the while, they'll hear nature noises Petrovich recorded in the desert near Sells, where many immigrants have died crossing the border.
The disjointed and experimental noises will enhance the practical joke that students already play on their minds with stereoscopic glasses.
It all becomes real from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Music building Monday.