A team of students and faculty from almost 15 institutions is developing a digital recreation of Hampi (in modern-day Karnataka), which used to be the capital of the Vijayanagar empire. Funded by the Union department of science and technology (DST), the project brings together technologists and culture scientists to create models of digital preservation. As part of a project titled Indian Digital Heritage, subgroups are exploring different facets of Hampi’s heritage, including the Vithala temple.

A subgroup of participants from four institutions has designed a 3D model, or a virtual museum, showing the temple. The people behind the government-funded project are from departments as diverse as computer science and engineering, history, architecture, electrical engineering, art and design.

At present, the project includes a 3D model of the temple with an interactive interface that allows users to navigate virtually using a digital beam. Further, to allow digital user interaction, visitors can click on any point on the site to obtain further information, which appears on an attached screen.

An example of the emerging area of digital humanities, the Hampi team used each other’s expertise.”The computer science and engineering department focused on recreating the 3D model but we banked on the group from architecture to note the measurements of the temple as well as share the rules of construction,” says Subodh Kumar, a faculty member from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi working on the project. Those with a background in cultural history provided information for the digital museum, he adds.

The group working on the museum model includes representatives from BVB College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli; National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore and International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad as well.
Since it is a part of the bigger Digital Hampi project under DST’s Indian Digital Heritage initiative, the participants are sharing expertise beyond their working groups as well. For instance, there is another working group, which has IIT Bombay and the National Institute of Design as main members, trying to recreate a scene of a bazaar outside the temple, with assistance from this four-institution team.

Source : Times of india

Date : June 15, 2015

  Virtual museums