Virtual reality in archiving, interpreting, and replicating South and Southeast Asian Buddhist artforms, cultural landscapes, and heritage sites

This graphics-intensive presentation will focus on several of Dr. Potkin’s ongoing projects in Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, including the eclipse of Rakhine Buddhist art, architecture and monuments in Bangladesh and Myanmar; the textual and visual record of the Phralak-Phralam (the Lao Ramayana) at Vat Oub Mong (Vientiane); the especially-revered Buddha images at Wat Pathumwanaram in Bangkok looted from Wiang Chanh/Vientiane; and visualizing Wat Chong Klan, a Shan temple in Mae Hong Son, Thailand with an altogether unique assemblage of mid-19th century reverse glass paintings and sculptures depicting the Vessantara Jataka and the Life of Buddha.

Alan Potkin usually describes himself as an “artisanal digital designer.”  Trained originally as a limnologist specializing in tropical rivers, he holds a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley’s program in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning.  The object of his practice — then and now — is developing and applying the interactive visualization toolbox towards cultural and ecological conservation, broadly defined.

Web announcement here.
Free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Art History and the Center for Buddhist Studies.