Experience the Art, Not the Claustrophobia, in Smithsonian's 3D Buddhist Cave Experience

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Maura Judkis

"Pure Land," a glimpse into a Buddhist cave temple. (Courtesy ALiVE, CityU and Dunhuang Academy)

WASHINGTON---A new digital installation at the Sackler gallery is all the fun of spelunking, with none of the claustrophobia. Visitors can surround themselves in 360 degrees of an ancient Chinese Buddhist cave, which seems like the lovechild of Google Art Project, IMAX 3D, and that Circle-Vision display at Epcot. Part of the Sackler’s 25th anniversary celebration, the technology of “Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang” comes to the gallery from China, where scientists used laser scanning and ultra-high-resolution photography to recreate a cave painted in the early Tang Dynasty, 618-705 A.D. Put on your 3D glasses and enter cave 220 — chosen because it is one of the most ornate, and also the most in need of preservation — and the walls of the cave surround you, first illuminated by flashlight, and then in full light. [link]