The Evolution of Visual Spectacle: A Virtual-Reality Exhibition at the Charles B. Wang Center

Abstract

Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center organized the exhibition Virtual Journeys: Chinese Buddhist Art and Architecture in the Digital Era, which ran from September 12 to December 15, 2018. The exhibition used virtual reality to showcase historical landmarks and subjects in a new museum-going experience. This essay discusses the successes and potential of VR exhibitions, as well as concerns about how three-dimensional space, virtually presented at full scale, may alter visitors’ experiences and public education.

Introduction

The Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University, New York, put together Virtual Journeys: Chinese Buddhist Art and Architecture in the Digital Era, an exhibition offering an almost purely digital and virtual experience of ancient Chinese architecture, in the fall of 2018. Three ancient Chinese Buddhist sites—the Dunhuang Grottoes, the Dazu Rock Carvings, and the Longmen Grottoes—were featured in photographs, videos, and animation; two additional historical sites—the Yungang Grottoes and the monastery Kaihuasi 開化寺—were available for viewing using virtual reality. The exhibition contents were produced by the Dunhuang Research Academy, Gansu Province; Peking University, Beijing; the Cultural Heritage Research Institute at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou; the Yungang Grottoes Research Academy, Shanxi Province; and the Longmen Grottoes Research Academy, Luoyang. I curated the exhibition itself. My curatorial intent was to demonstrate how new imaging technology can bring heritage sites and objects to light in profound and unforgettable ways beyond physical distance and other divisions, rather than to focus extensively on how the images were reconstructed virtually or on the devices and digital techniques that accomplished these feats. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Wang Center offered a full-day symposium centered around Chinese Buddhist art and architecture in the digital era. Unique, specialized knowledge was provided by seven expert scholars: Dr. Di Luo of Connecticut College, Dr. Wu-Wei Chen of New York University Shanghai, Dr. Jianwei Zhang of Peking University, Dr. Fletcher John Coleman of the University of Texas at Arlington, Dr. Changyu Diao of Zhejiang University, Dr. Bo Ning of the Yungang Grottoes Research Academy, and Mr. Haitao Chen of the Dunhuang Research Academy. This essay primarily will discuss virtual reality’s influence on museum experience and public education: how a three-dimensional space, virtually presented at full scale, altered visitors’ experiences and understanding, as well as what advantages and pitfalls this technology may bring.

Evolution of Visual Culture

While visual culture evolves with every generation, the invention and improvement of optical devices and technology have been galvanized at an astounding pace in the twenty-first century. Early visual devices were humble and simple. In the late eighteenth century, the panorama was one of the most influential forms of visual entertainment throughout Europe and North America, with the ability to construct a concrete sense of experiential reality. The remarkable 360-degree images produced by panoramas contributed to the emergence of the modern spectator.[1] The illusion of movement was introduced in the early nineteenth century with the stereoscope. This device, which played with the binocular disparity of our eyes, added a greater sensation of depth to images. At this point, not only did the modern spectator exist, but so did the modern perception of space, particularly in the West.[2] This perception was altered radically to include time when modern cameras and filming techniques were developed in the twentieth century.

Twenty-first-century technology—computer science, graphic design, digital image processing, and more—is pushing the boundaries of visual culture even further. Spectators are not limited simply to viewing the illusion, but can interact with it. Virtual reality positions the viewer on the very brink of reality and fantasy, where she only needs her eyes and fingers to perceive a wholly manmade, digital world. This is the visual culture that we live in today, in which mimetic image becomes virtual simulation. As the exhibit’s curator, I aimed to highlight the variety of technologies offered by our contemporary visual culture; I incorporated traditional architectural exhibition techniques with 2D mediums like photography and drawings, as well as a novel addition: three-dimensional models and spaces, virtually presented at full scale.

A Virtual Connection to Historic Asian Art

The Virtual Journeys exhibition presented well-researched narratives and rich historical information on five cultural heritage sites in China. From the fourth through eleventh centuries, hundreds of caves were painstakingly carved out of cliff faces across China in projects sponsored by Buddhist monks, local officials, and wealthy families who wished to accrue karmic merit and perform acts of veneration. The walls and ceilings of these caves are decorated with elaborate paintings of the Buddha and his life, Buddhist sutras, ornamental designs, scenes of social and commercial life, and portraits of the projects’ backers. Stellar works of stone carving, fine art, sculpture, and architecture were showcased in the exhibition via conventional visual materials, such as detailed photographs and educational videos. The Wang Center also provided a virtual experience to give visitors a better sense of the scale of some of these locales. The exhibition offered an alternative experience of ancient Chinese cultural heritage sites, which currently are threatened by natural disasters, war, urban development, extensive tourism, human destruction, time, and neglect. In fact, many caves at these sites are closed to the public to prevent the ongoing erasure of a fascinating past. By using virtual reality, however, members of the public can experience these caves as if they really were there in person.

One of the highlights of the exhibition was the virtual experience of the Yungang Grottoes and the monastery Kaihuasi. Visitors could feel as though they were actually exploring the caves or walking through the monastery’s halls. This gave visitors an opportunity to experience these ancient spaces in China with their bodies and senses, despite being thousands of miles away on the east coast of the United States. Unsurprisingly, visitors responded very positively, often clustering around the exhibition’s VR terminals.

The Yungang Grottoes

Located in Datong City in China’s Shanxi Province, the massive Yungang Grottoes were cut from solid rock in a period spanning the mid-fifth to early sixth century.[3] Comprised of 252 caves and niches as well as 51,000 statues within a carved area of 18,000 square meters, the Yungang Grottoes are an outstanding achievement of Chinese Buddhist cave art, distinguished by a distinctive sculptural aesthetic (fig. 1). They are a masterpiece of the first pinnacle of Chinese art. The grottoes have served as a model for later Buddhist cave art in both China and greater East Asia.[4] The art within touches on numerous themes, including governance, economics, culture, religion, geography, medicine, modes of aesthetic appreciation, trade and cultural contact, and exchanges between China and the world. The carved statues, which embody particular modes of Buddhist thought from the period, exerted a tremendous influence on Chinese Buddhist sculpture at the time. The caves also contain brightly painted clay sculptures of the Buddha and other important luminaries (fig. 2).

Figure 1. Exterior view of Caves 11, 12, and 13 of the Yungang Grottoes, Northern Wei dynasty (386–535). Datong City, Shanxi Province, China. Courtesy of the Yungang Grottoes Research Institute

Figure 2. Western niche in the third register of the north wall in the anteroom of Cave 9 of the Yungang Grottoes, Northern Wei dynasty (386–535). Clay with polychrome pigments. Datong City, Shanxi Province, China. Courtesy of the Yungang Grottoes Research Institute

The virtual-reality tour of Cave 3 allowed exhibition visitors to experience all of these marvels in stunning detail (fig. 3). In terms of size, Cave 3 is the largest cave in the Yungang Grottoes, soaring to about ten meters in height. Wearing the VR headset, not only were spectators able to move freely within the virtual interior without obstruction, they also could adjust the cave’s lighting and their viewer perspectives to their preferences. Visitors could enjoy a tiny detail at close range or a wider panorama of the room, and could look at objects from angles that would be impossible as vantage points in the actual grottoes. Moving the thumbstick on the VR controller up and down, viewers could get closer to the sculptures or other features of the cave’s interior (fig. 4). Created through laser scans, this virtual-reality construction of Cave 3 maps to the scale of the real cave, providing realistic navigation of the virtual model at high resolution. This carefully engineered virtual image may approximate the real thing, but in other ways, it also opens up additional possibilities for the viewer.

Figure 3. Three Saints of the West in the western main room of Cave 3 of the Yungang Grottoes, Northern Wei dynasty (386–535). Carved stone. Datong City, Shanxi Province, China. Courtesy of the Yungang Grottoes Research Institute

Figure 4. Virtual-reality tour of Cave 3 of the Yungang Grottoes, in the exhibition Virtual Journeys: Chinese Buddhist Art and Architecture in the Digital Era. Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University, New York. Photo by Frank L. Fumelli, courtesy of the Charles B. Wang Center

Kaihuasi

Virtual Journeys also showcased Peking University’s digitization of Kaihuasi, a Buddhist monastery located in southeastern Shanxi Province (fig. 5). Originally established in the sixth century, the monastery was expanded from the late ninth to early tenth century. Kaihuasi is especially famous for its main hall, called the Daxiongbaodian 大雄寶殿 (Mahāvīra Hall), and its exquisite Buddhist murals that date back to the eleventh century.

Figure 5. Main Hall (Daxiongbaodian) of Kaihuasi. Gaoping, Shanxi Province, China. Courtesy of the School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University

The research team at Peking University’s Experimental Teaching Center for Virtual Reality and Simulation in Archaeology used virtual-reality technology to record the monastery (fig. 6). The team first deployed drones to take aerial pictures of the complex and then used panoramic photography to record the interior and exterior of each and every building. In order to virtually reconstruct the structure and the murals in the Daxiongbaodian, the team took 480 high-resolution photographs. Photogrammetry was used to create a 3D model of the main hall’s interior, complete with surface textures and color. As a result, exhibition visitors could view the Daxiongbaodian by using Google Cardboard VR headsets or by logging into the exhibition’s website on their mobile phones. This feat speaks to just how far virtual-reality technology has advanced, even in the past decade. VR headsets can even transmit individual images, drum-scanned to create a realistic 3D panoramic perspective, to the left and right eyes. Furthermore, visitors could adjust their viewing perspective, enabling them to explore the monastery from the ground or take in rare details (fig. 7).

Figure 6. Viewing the details of a mural in the Daxiongbaodian with a VR controller. Courtesy of the School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University

Figure 7. Bird’s-eye view of Kaihuasi, from the virtual tour of the monastery. http://vr.pkugujian.com/

The work done by Peking University’s team is an excellent example of how virtual reality and other advanced imaging technologies can democratize culture and education. Not everyone can afford the time and expense required to take a trip to China and see a site like Kaihuasi; furthermore, real dangers are posed to the integrity of such historical sites from overwhelming numbers of tourists and nearby development. As imaging technologies grow more common and more advanced, however, access to optical devices expands. Unlike in earlier centuries, the rich or bourgeois classes no longer have such a strong monopoly on images or imaging technology; therefore, their opinions of the world are no longer as dominant and promoted.[5] In exhibitions like Virtual Journeys, any interested visitor can gain access to these wonders. People who have never set foot in China, no matter where they are in the world, can know what it is like to walk through Kaihuasi.[6] This democratization, in turn, opens up the possibility of more numerous and varied readings of historic sites. High versus low class, culture versus entertainment—these factors do not matter in this equation. The fact remains that a historical subject (and, in a good exhibition, its historical context) will reach a wider scope of people than ever before, and will become much more relevant to their lives.

Furthermore, in Virtual Journeys, we were sure to convey not only the historical importance of each site but also its rich stories. In these places, now accessible through virtual reality, we were able to open new narratives for new audiences to discover. In a very real sense, virtual reality can allow a museum or cultural center to transport immovable locations anywhere in the world with just a headset. This is how a college student in Stony Brook, New York, could have the chance to appreciate these pinnacles of Chinese art and culture without having to break the bank. This technology also can effectively resolve the contradictions between preservation and tourism.

Digital Storytelling

Alongside virtual-reality technology, Virtual Journeys utilized animated films as a means to provide context and additional entertainment for audiences. While the plethora of visuals provided by the exhibition was a feast for the eyes, it must be acknowledged that Buddhist studies and Buddhist art are deep, esoteric fields of inquiry. The history and religious concepts behind these sites and artifacts are likely to be unfamiliar to many visitors. Animation is an excellent way to distill interesting and important information in a dynamic and appealing format.

In 1998, the Dunhuang Research Academy launched a cooperative effort to document the Dunhuang Grottoes digitally. These grottoes contain countless murals and painted sculptures that were created over a millennium ago, sometime between the Northern Liang (397–460) and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties. The techniques used in the digitization effort included digital graphic documentation, virtual conservation, and computer-aided reprography. This venture accomplished something else as well: the creative reinvention of the murals as animation. Fascinated by the sublime works of art in Cave 254, the film directors Haitao Chen and Qi Chen adapted the rich imagery of the Buddhist stories portrayed on the cave walls into animation (fig. 8). The Wang Center screened the film, which was released in 2016, at the exhibition, both to showcase a modern creative interpretation of Buddhist cave paintings and to educate visitors on the symbolism that they would be seeing. The film was received well by diverse audiences.

Figure 8. Haitao Chen and Qi Chen (directors). Still from the animated film Subduing the Devil, 2016. Courtesy of Dunhuang Research Academy

Critical Concerns

In many ways, the Virtual Journeys exhibition was a success in showcasing how digital tools and platforms can be used creatively to engage with and broaden audiences. Nevertheless, some critical concerns must be addressed. Virtual reality is a new technological marvel in museums; not so long ago, it was merely the stuff of science fiction. It is an entirely new manner of seeing, with enormous potential to educate and entertain. Considering how modern society has evolved in step with increasingly complex optical devices, we may be experiencing a trajectory similar to that seen over the past two centuries with the rise of photography and telecommunications.

The theories of the influential Frankfurt School are relevant to understanding consumption in the modern world and the emerging experience of virtual reality.[7] Several of the Frankfurt School’s philosophers and theorists, such as Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) and Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), have critiqued the culture industry in capitalist societies, arguing that works of art lose their exceptional auras in an “age of mechanical reproduction.”[8] Perhaps they have a point. The digitization of cultural heritage sites and objects can provide an opportunity to see and view these things regardless of the viewer’s location, even potentially crossing language and national barriers, so long as the right device or program is available. Viewing digital copies, however, cannot quite compare to experiencing real sites and objects firsthand. Yet this argument also may be countered: digitization and reproduction may bring important and well-deserved attention to wonderful works that otherwise may go ignored or unnoticed. Furthermore, as advanced imaging technology continues to evolve, virtual reality can combine seamlessly with what we perceive as real.

Arguably, this is why we need to be more cautious in our consumption of simulated cultural properties. How far should we take the blurring of the real and the virtual? We should remember the criticism of a fragmented postmodern society offered by Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007).[9] Virtual reality’s simulation experience is exactly what Baudrillard has identified as a pervasive phenomenon in how forms of consumer culture and modern media have attained a primary level of reality. In this sense, contemporary audiences become more and more vulnerable the more we consume virtual images. When this happens, the boundaries of the authentic and the virtual begin to blend and bleed into each other. Society of the Spectacle (1967) by Guy Debord (1931–1994) also reveals something very interesting about the way in which virtual-reality technology is distributed. Debord argues that spectacle is not simply an effect of mass media but is about the organization of society itself. The main feature of a society of the spectacle is the increasing separation and isolation of individuals from each other. Thus, the key feature of spectacle is the destruction of community.[10] Virtual reality is very much an individual experience, separating viewers from the rest of the real world outside their headsets, even if they are in a crowded museum.

Conclusion

The Virtual Journeys exhibition was a pronounced break from conventional museum traditions and the Charles B. Wang Center’s usual modus operandi. Yet it reflects the growing presence of virtual reality in our modern visual culture. This exhibition showcased the potential of digital technology and advanced graphic programs to affect art, culture, education, curatorial practice, and museum experience in several positive ways that are worth exploring and experimenting with further. It also provided an interactive opportunity for new audiences to see the historical past and our technological future simultaneously. In a way, Virtual Journeys is an extraordinary example of a blurred frontier between the physical space of the museum and the virtual consumption of culture. Art may be dematerialized, but as a means of both historical preservation and the dissemination of cultural memory.

Virtual Journeys did not exhibit representations or substitutes for absent elements of cultural heritage. With an inventory of digitally captured images on display, visitors could travel across time and space. In the realm of curatorial practice, the exhibition opened up our thinking in exciting new ways, which will lead us to embrace new capabilities and innovate novel ways of understanding and exhibiting Asian art moving forward. On the visitors’ side, viewers discovered the latest that digital technology has to offer when it comes to providing access to cultural history and heritage worth appreciating. The exhibition was a perfect marriage between technology and the humanities that made for an optimal museum experience. Virtual Journeys also addressed the strategic role that virtual reality can play in outreach programs with mutual benefit for on-site activities, as well as how digitization can enable institutions to run longer and more varied exhibitions while reducing the actual damage that may result from mass tourism or excessive handling. Lastly, the exhibition demonstrated that pairing virtual reality and a physical exhibition can present an effective way for institutions to promote access to and interest in historical sites, artifacts, cultural heritage, and historical knowledge for audiences in remote or far-flung locations.

Although larger concerns remain about the true authenticity of art and the isolation of experiencing it through virtual reality, Virtual Journeys marked a change to the conventional nature of museum visitation and museum experience. It entailed experimenting beyond traditional concepts of an architectural exhibition and required new skill sets, interdisciplinary interests, and an openness to new strategies. The exhibition was insightful, delightful, and even inspiring for both the public and expert viewers. Virtual Journeys proved that technology and cultural heritage can form yet stronger alliances to embrace a more collaborative, interdisciplinary, and innovative future. If the panorama aroused a vision of new horizons for people in the nineteenth century, we may say soon that virtual reality arouses not a sense of isolation but rather a connection to the past and the future in the twenty-first century.

Jinyoung A. Jin is the director of cultural programs at Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center, an institution devoted to Asian and Asian American arts and culture. Jin has curated and organized many critically acclaimed exhibitions, including most recently Forgotten Faces: Visual Representation of Trauma and Mass Killings in Asia (2020), Korea: A Land of Hats (2019), Virtual Journeys: Chinese Buddhist Art and Architecture in the Digital Era (2018), and Potasia: Potatoism in the East (2018). A number of her bold and innovative curatorial achievements have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, and PBS, among other media outlets. Jin’s most recent publication is an essay in Chaekgeori: The Power and Pleasure of Possessions in Korean Painted Screens (2017). She also currently serves as a member of the community advisory board of PBS Thirteen/WLIW. She holds an MA from Columbia University and is nearing completion of a doctorate in cultural analysis and theory at Stony Brook University, where her research focuses on the visual representation of modern conflicts, political trauma, and wars in Asia. E-mail: [email protected]

Notes

1. Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (New York: Zone Books), 5–47.

2. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).

3. A few caves were carved later, but most of the complex was completed in the sixth century.

4. Joy Lidu Li, Yungang: Art, History, Archaeology, Liturgy (London: Routledge, 2017), 20–52.

5. Oettermann, The Panorama, 7.

6. Hundreds of Chinese cultural heritage sites have been documented digitally using panoramic photography, photogrammetry, 3D scanning, and 3D modeling. Furthermore, these digital resources are widely accessible to the public, and may be used for further general research in the arts, architecture, archaeology, and history, and for tourism. As not all of these sites are available in English, however, some language barriers still exist. Also, high-tech VR equipment is required for a full-scale experience. Nevertheless, this is a truly remarkable democratization in access to visual culture.

7. The Frankfurt School is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in 1923 at Goethe University Frankfurt.

8. For critiques of the culture industry, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 94–136. Quotation from Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 19–55.

9. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

10. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Boston: MIT Press, 1967).