Take it 360: Online time with Google Arts & Culture

If you find yourself tooling around the world online, consider one of the areas where Google Arts & Culture can bring you: fascinating places experienced in 360 degrees.

This particular Google Arts & Culture project takes you everywhere, it seems, in a manner that’s almost like being there in person. While we can’t be many places physically, here’s one way to let your eyes, mind and spirit wander.

What’s worthwhile? Go find these five examples when you log into this online platform: artsandculture.google.com/ project/360-videos.

Experience Shakespeare in 360 degrees with a “Henry V” rehearsal from the Royal Shakespeare Company. On a bare stage, the raw power of this play come through: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead!” While the seats are empty, the intensity of the words strangely rings true in a rehearsal seen from the bird’s eye perspective.

Want to see what it’s like on stage for a Broadway show? Drop into a 360 degrees experience up close with actors for “West Side Story,” performers putting all their moves and moxie into a rendition of the song “Cool” with the audience all around (and then sans audience in other shots), plus a small orchestra playing along. It’s an intense, action-packed five minutes for this sassy Sondheim and Bernstein song presented by Carnegie Hall.

Here’s one story that may pique the interest of many women with a black dress hiding in their closet: how it became an iconic fashion necessity. One 360 degrees video explores its rise in connection to designer Coco Chanel. At the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, a particular silk black dress showcases how it gained prominence — and is said to have freed women from the corset, becoming ubiquitous in the wardrobes of contemporary women.

In “Meet the Titanosaur,” come along as the American Museum of Natural History welcomes a new, mega-long resident. Stretching to more than 120 feet from head to tail, the Titanosaur once roamed, millions of years ago, the reach

es of what’s now Argentina. See how the dinosaur cast is crafted from fiberglass after 3-D scans lead to digitized data and the creation of a skeleton copy.

■ Have you ever kicked back on the toilet and wondered to yourself: How could I do this in outer space? Well, Google Arts & Culture shows you with the 360 video explanation at the National Air and Space Museum. It’s a top question asked, admits retired astronaut Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden, who served on space shuttle missions. He describes the contoured seat for a proper fit; accuracy is important, of course, as a vacuum is used to draw the “bad matter” away from the astronaut’s bottom. It sounds like an intricate process, complete with hip and foot restraints. Don’t float away, that’s all important.