3D shapes are fun, and Berkeley has a lot of them in the form of abstract sculptures. Thanks to a wonderful visit in Oxford and year of working with them as stimuli for computer vision (see 3D Shape Attributes with A. Zisserman and A. Gupta for the results), I've started appreciating them more.

From a vision perspective, the fun part is that they're 3D things you can walk around and they're typically forms you're not used to so you see less of your preconcieved notions. This lets you you walk around and see how what you see changes as what you see changes.

Here are a few of my favorites on campus (in no particular order), my not-so-good pictures of them, and what I like about them.

Pomodoro Sphere

Artist: Arnaldo Pomodoro
Location: West side of campus entrance near Oxford and Center Here

My two favorite things about this are probably:

• The combination of the jagged bits that poke out from the sculpture and the overall smooth shape of the object. But the ``jagged bits'' are flat, and thus what make the sculpture jagged is really the infinitesimal discontinuous places.
  
  
• The hole because there are few opportunities to look through a tube that is this size. This provides a fun demonstration of orthographic / weak-perspective vs full perspective projection: far away, the sides of the tube more or less disappear (but don't fall in the creek trying to see this); up close, the sides of the tube dominate your field of view. This can also be demonstrated by putting a paper towel tube on a flat surface and slowly moving towards until you're looking through it like a telescope, but that's less fun.

Calder Hawk for Peace

Artist: Alexander Calder
Location: South side of campus, next to old museum Here

• It's fun how something so huge rests on such a small and delicate set of points.
• The body of the sculpture is perfectly symmetric and flat and the wings totally aren't. But the extent to which they aren't isn't immediately obvious until you look down the somewhat-axis of symmetry.

Pillar of Engineering

Artist: Carlo Sequin
Location: Sixth Floor, Sutardja Dai Hall Map

Enter at either 2nd, 3rd floor. Take the elevator to the 6th floor and head left until you hit a patio between buildings. It's on the side closest to the bay.

• The holes are fun and it's fun to see through the holes as you walk around: the sculpture self-occludes and permits seeing through in some places but not others, and this changes quickly as you circle it.
• I think what's nice about this one is that it's a modified mathematical object that is itself of interest (apparently a Scherk surface).
• The general direction of the wavy bits doesn't match either gravity or the points at which the sculpture's sliced.

  Voyage

  Artist: Richard O'Hanlon
  Location: Next to Berkeley Music Hall and Law School Map
  
  To be honest, I didn't like this sculpture at first. It looks kinda like a Henry Moore but not quite. But it grew on me. One day, I looked at the plaque, found the name, Voyage and got it.
  
  At least, to me, it's moving (or not) from right-to-left as seen in picture 2.

  Within

  Artist: Alexander Liberman
  Location: Between Morgan Hall and Li Ka Shing on the west side of campus Map
  
  It's tubes, chopped and bolted together. I like how the different ones are cut at different angles. Go to Yali's nearby for coffee.

  Interior Force

  Artist: Ralph Stackpole
  Location: Just across Strawberry Creek from Sproul Plaza, on the right Map
  
  This one is really easy to miss but you'll spot it if you look to your right walking through Sather gate from the south. It's small and blends in, as if someone accidentally left it there and everyone just assumed it's supposed to be there. It's cute and I'm not sure what's going on, but I like it: it feels as if it's depicting something that I just don't have the reference for.