Point Cloud of the Kidane Mehret Church, Jerusalem. The Spirit of the Cloud project (2020)
a VR experience, based on a photogrammetric survey. Users can virtually travel through the 3d space via the interface of an Oculus rift.
How VR and AR relate to my work
Virtual and augmented reality turn documentation into experience. A photogrammetric point cloud or 3D model becomes a space that can be walked through at full scale, from viewpoints impossible on site. For me this is not only a presentation tool but a research question: how do these technologies reshape the relations between people, images and place, and how does each change the other? In The Spirit of the Cloud (2020), a point cloud of the Kidane Mehret Church in Jerusalem became a VR environment, and the accompanying paper reads the “New Jerusalem” as a metaphor for social experiences of virtual technologies.
Further reading
- A survey of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality for cultural heritage, Bekele et al., ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 2018
- A comparison of immersive realities and interaction methods: cultural learning in virtual heritage, Bekele and Champion, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2019
- The spirit of the cloud, Caine, Altaratz, Mann and Havkin, EVA London, 2020