NepalBuddhism3D.web.unc.edu was born from an initial collaboration between Lauren Leve, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Bradley Erickson, an archeologist and digital humanist specializing in ancient Jewish synagogues who received his Ph.D. from that same department in 2020. It was inspired by a call for curricular innovation using new digital technologies. We gratefully acknowledge UNC’s Center for Faculty Excellence and the Lenovo corporation for their support of this work.
From the beginning, we sought both to create digital environments for use in courses on Himalayan Buddhism and, eventually, the public, and also to build partnerships that center the voices and experiences of Himalayan Buddhists in the processes and forms by which Buddhism is represented. Because these practices necessarily go hand in hand, we approach this project as a work-in-progress. Our goals have continued to evolve and expand as we’ve allied with community partners in Nepal.
The heart of the initiative is a series of 3D models and accompanying 360-degree video that users can view in 2D using an ordinary computer or smartphone screen and also access via VR/AR platforms. Over two trips in 2018, we used DSLR cameras to capture images of significant Buddhist objects and locations, which we edited and combined using photogrammetric software after our return to Chapel Hill. Currently, we are working to make the models accessible in fully VR environments. While the 3D models on the NepalBuddhism3D website are viewable in VR, they have not yet been optimized for a fully immersive experience.
Moving ahead, we will work with interested members of stakeholder communities to annotate these and other models in ways that highlight the social and historical connections between people, places and Buddhist traditions. For example, we plan for digital visitors to be able to click on a prayer wheel in the virtual environment to hear a Buddhist artisan describe how he was taught to make prayer wheels as a child in a family workshop and the international markets within which he sells them now, or a daily visitor to the shrine sharing memories of the stupa over the years. Clicking elsewhere might produce the voice of a woman explaining how to light butter lamps and what this offering means to her; an acting priest describing the unique system by which ritual duties rotate among initiated members of Newar kin groups and the taboos one must observe while officiating at the temple; or a group of pilgrims explaining why they have come to that place on that day. By embedding oral histories and other narratives of Buddhist practice in the models and virtual environments, we seek to challenge universalizing descriptions which offer abstracted explanations of “what Buddhism is” without reference to the affective experiences or localized meanings that shape Buddhist life for actual practitioners. Connecting visitors to the histories and voices of Buddhists who embody the tradition in particular places and ways can help outsiders understand Buddhism as a living religion that is inseparable from culture, community and place.