After my adventure at sea, I came back to campus with just two days… two days to pull something together for our first Work-In-Progress (WIP) show!

In case you're unfamiliar, at UAL our final dissertation isn't a traditional paper it's an exhibition. A full-on show open to both the university and industry, where we showcase the culmination of everything we've worked on throughout the course. It's a big deal.

To prepare for that moment, we go through a series of WIP shows. Each one helps us practise the art of exhibiting and gradually shape our final project.

For my final piece, I’m aiming to create a literal data viz show a live performance that frames data visualisation as edutainment (yes, that’s education + entertainment). So when it came time for the first WIP, the big question was: what should I do?

Fresh off the sea and inspired by the vastness of it all, my project partner Chani and I became obsessed with space. She suggested doing a data viz project about stars, and I said, “Cool, I’ll build a VR space experience.”

And so, in just two days, we taught ourselves Tableau and Unreal Engine (yes, really) and created… something! It wasn’t perfect (lots of last-minute bugs, of course), but people genuinely enjoyed exploring our virtual space environment.

Check out the pictures, not bad for a first go, right?