Digitizing hampi and lepakshi temple ceiling murals: Towards universal access and tangible virtuality

Abstract

Ancient and medieval period temple ceiling paintings, murals, sculpture, architecture and intangible cultural heritage of the site are considered shared collective heritage to be preserved for future generations. Democratic access to such forms of heritage through open access and open-source interactive digital platforms can serve the dual purpose of preservation and dissemination of tangible and intangible heritage of murals and other related knowledge. Those engaged in the design and development need to collaborate with cultural experts and users in codesigning interactive platforms which not only convey expert knowledge but also are user-friendly and provide more immersive and enriched experiences of the heritage artefacts than a visit to the heritage site would. The aims of this Indian Digital Heritage project were to capture, digitize and archive the tangible and intangible heritage of the ceiling murals in two key sites of Vijayanagara and post-Vijayanagara period-Virupaksha temple at Hampi and Veerabhadraswamy temple at Lepakshi. We present the digitization and archiving of murals along with the methods and tools for capture and development of user-driven, codesigned, web-enabled interactive archives of the ceiling plans of murals in Hampi and Lepakshi with expert knowledge. We project a futuristic plan for the digital archive through innovative digital approaches Tangible Virtuality (TV). This approach can offer our users a rich, layered, immersive, multi-sensory experience thereby enhancing their aesthetic enjoyment of cultural heritage artefacts without actually being present at the physical site.