Art with the Smithsonian

​When I left school last week, I wasn't feeling very good. I had forgotten my Physics textbook at home, and everyone had given me crap about it. Almost immediately after I left school, I went and bought myself a dozen doughnuts, most of which I angrily consumed.

Halfway through the box, I noticed that we weren't driving towards our house. I asked my mom where we were going, and she told me that over a month ago I had agreed to sign up for this digital design workshop over at the Smithsonian, and had promptly forgotten all about it. I was a bit reluctant at first, but I had nothing better to do, and after a while I decided to stay. For most of the time, I was hanging out with this cool girl named Ren.

The first thing we did was go to the Sackler gallery and check out this statue called the Cosmic Buddha. It's a statue of a guy in robes with no head or hands, with a bunch of pictures of the Buddha engraved on it. Around the statue there was an exhibit about how the Smithsonian used 3D scanning technology to create a 3D model of the statue. all I could think was, it must be a pretty big file.

Then we left the gallery, and I noticed with slight uneasiness that we were headed toward the Hirshhorn. Don't get me wrong, modern art is cool and all, but some of that stuff is weird. Like, one time I went there, and there was this exhibit which was just a video of these two dudes having a staring contest, and then their heads explode, and then there's just some guy drumming. And then there was this one time I thought something was a table, but it was actually an exhibit. And if you're anything like me, you'll find plenty of stuff to go "What the (expletive of your choice)?" at. 

Suddenly, we went down into a garden, and to this one place that's like a hidden area in a video game. There were these doors inside the lower garden, under the Hirshhorn. It's this place called ArtLab+, and my first thought when I got inside was, This place is cool. 
It's all shwanky, with bright colors, and comfy couches, and stuff. It's a pretty cool setup, they've got 3D printers, a sound stage, all sorts of design software, all sorts of free workshops, including a video game design thingy using Super Mario Maker! I made a mental note to come back there and share my Mario Maker levels with them. Plus, they hold a FRIGGIN SUPER SMASH BROS. TOURNAMENT and if you know me, you know I'm getting in on that.

So when we got there, the resident mentors gave us a quick overview of this 3D design software, Sculptris, and they set us up at Macs and we got started.
But as it turned out, it was more difficult for me to think of a good idea for something than I thought it would.

I messed around on the software for a bit, but everything I made turned out looking creepy or just plain weird. And while I'm a big fan of being weird, plain weird just doesn't appeal to me, and creepy just isn't my style. So I ended up with just a sphere, which wasn't too fulfilling.
Then we were given 3D models of the Cosmic Buddha statue without any carvings on it, and we were to put our own stories on it and mess around with it in general. I thought that with this base model to work from, I could really make something cool.
Nope.
The same problem happened, and I ended up with nothing. It was pretty cool to see what everyone else made, though. One person turned it into a teddy bear, and another turned it into an embodiment of the internet.
Overall, it was a pretty cool experience. I found this cool place, and I met some cool people. It was a good evening.
​Plus I got to eat, like, seven doughnuts in one sitting. BOOM.