What: Welcome to My World from Electric Dreams

Where: Great Hall at Masonic Lodge

How much? $15, concession $12, tickets for all shows here

VR has exploded over the last few years, and is rapidly becoming the new Thing. If buying an Oculus isn’t for you though (we love poor students here at Collage because we are poor students lol), Electric Dreams is!

With six different VR experiences to choose from, you can sit inside a Washington diner, live out your Rear Window voyeuristic fantasies to solve a murder, travel to Antarctica, and even go to space, all within the comfort of the Great Hall at the Masonic Lodge on North Terrace.

I was unsure at first; VR has always seemed like a cool new tech that I’m not too fussed by. What piqued my interest, though, was the narratives: the two documentary stories in “Welcome to My World” follow people whose lives I can’t imagine living. In the first a woman is treated for breast cancer, while talking about her experience of the diagnosis; in the second, African-American activists and citizens discuss the fraught position of travelling while black, with particularly emotional interviews with Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was shot and killed by police.

While I was nervous that the VR would ultimately be gimmicky, I ended up completely absorbed in it. Any self-consciousness I had of wearing the headset quickly faded, and I was spinning in my chair like a doofus trying to look at the whole room.

At only $15, and with one day left, this is an excellent and unique experience that you shouldn’t miss!

4/5

–Brydie