Wonderspaces
What can I say, I'm a sucker for interactive art...
I'm a sucker for pop-ups too.
Wonderspaces is a pop-up interactive art installation currently in San Diego until July 30th. You may have seen some of these works of art if you've been to Burning Man, Sundance Film Festival or SXSW. Since I've yet to have had the opportunity to go to any of those, I was very excited to hear that the first stop of Wonderspaces was in my hometown of San Diego.
Every aspect of Wonderspace is wonder...ful. When you check in, you are directed to enter a dark tunnel with pink and green black light tape spiraling through to the end. You feel like Alice going through the rabbit hole and each step brings more and more excitement to what's on the other side.
From there, the adventure is all in your hands.
They have three VR stations with different experiences (I did the scary one...I don't know why). It's suggested if you want to try them out, to sign up first, because the wait for those can be 30 minutes long on a busy day! We got very lucky, although we only did one VR, the wait for it was just 5 minutes.
My favorite room was the Daydream V2. It reminds me of being in the Mandy Moore "Cry" Music Video (you know which one that is, it was the song on "Walk to Remember"). The light cycles between squares, circles and lines creating what I can only best describe as a dancing portal. I could have spent hours in there, the light was so enchanting and relaxing...it's so easy to zone out.
My second favorite room is ADA. In this room, you have a giant balloon filled with helium with charcoal points. You push the balloon around and it makes marks all over the wall. It was very interesting to push around something so much bigger than you with such ease. Your brain kind of fights with you saying "Wait, this isn't right, this shouldn't be this easy to move around" but you could easily move it across the room with one hand.
One surprising thing I liked about Wonderspaces was that it wasn't packed! Living in LA for 4 years now, every pop-up, every museum, every gallery, is always filled with people. I mean, people wait in line for hours for Salt & Straw, every weekend! There's just too many people living here that everything is always brimming with people. Here I was able to take my time, spend as long as I wanted per installation. It. Was. Incredible.
If you're in San Diego, I would recommend visiting Wonderspaces. Tickets are available online, but you can also purchase tickets by walking in (I like to buy them before hand so it seems like I have my life together to the employee checking me in). Go check it out, let me know which was your favorite piece!