Echoes of Camel Bells: Art Civilization along the Silk Roads
2024-01-13 - 2024-01-13
Beijing Minsheng Art Museum

Harvard FAS CAMLab’s Digital Luoyang Project employs an interdisciplinary approach to reconstruct the sights and sounds of Luoyang around 500 CE. This endeavor provides a unique portal into this once vibrant world, enabling contemporary audiences to engage with and appreciate a crucial chapter in China’s rich cultural history. Grounded on years of academic efforts, Digital Luoyang presents two multi-sensorial installations as well as digitalluoyang.com, a virtual platform that allows the visitors to explore a digital reconstruction of Luoyang and its monuments in a 3D walkthrough.

Digital Luoyang
Digital Luoyang
Project Overview

 

The Digital Luoyang project is an ambitious interdisciplinary venture in historical reconstruction and virtual world-building. Centered on the Northern-Wei capital, Luoyang, circa 500 CE, the project meticulously recreates the city’s comprehensive spatial design and a selection of its significant monuments, encapsulating a critical period in early 6th-century global urban development.

In 493 CE, Luoyang supplanted Pingcheng as the Northern Wei dynasty’s capital when the Tuoba Clan of the Xianbei embarked on a strategic program of Sinicization. The Northern Wei’s innovative city-planning model for Luoyang heralded a new era in Chinese urban planning history: marked by systematic zoning, sophisticated infrastructure, and a cosmologically symbolic layout, it set a transformative precedent for subsequent dynastic capitals. An essential hub for multicultural exchange, Luoyang welcomed a wide array of visitors, including merchants, monks, and pilgrims from Central, South, and East Asia. This convergence of diverse cultures, commercial products, and religions and belief systems was pivotal in molding the unique metropolitan artistic styles that would flourish during the subsequent Sui and Tang dynasties.

However, Luoyang experienced a precipitous decline beginning in 528 CE, a mere four decades after its founding, when the warlord Erzhu Rong conquered the city, executed the ruling class, and carried out a mass slaughter of the aristocracy and officials. Luoyang then endured multiple episodes of war-related destruction and, by 534 CE, ceased to function as the capital, descending into a state of ruin. This decline also symbolized the end of the Northern Wei dynasty.

The Northern Wei scholar Yang Xuanzhi offers a poignant portrait of the city from its zenith to its ultimate demise and abandonment. In his Luoyang Qielan Ji ( “Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang”), Yang details Luoyang’s urban landscape, marked by magnificent Buddhist monuments and opulent ceremonies, against the background of the major historical events of the early 6th century. In this way, Northern Wei Luoyang is immortalized in Chinese cultural history not merely for its physical splendor but as a rich tapestry of resplendent but fragmented memories. Luoyang’s legacy continues to inspire exploration and rediscovery, with recent archaeological excavations shedding new light on its splendid urban structure and cultural milieu.

Harvard FAS CAMLab’s Digital Luoyang Project employs an interdisciplinary approach to reconstruct the sights and sounds of Luoyang around 500 CE. This endeavor provides a unique portal into this once vibrant world, enabling contemporary audiences to engage with and appreciate a crucial chapter in China’s rich cultural history. Grounded on years of academic efforts, Digital Luoyang presents two multi-sensorial installations as well as digitalluoyang.com, a virtual platform that allows the visitors to explore a digital reconstruction of Luoyang and its monuments in a 3D walkthrough.

Works
Works
洛阳·幻城 Luoyang: the Imagescape

 

Drawing upon recent archaeological findings and historical texts from the sixth century, the Digital Luoyang project endeavors to meticulously reconstruct the entire urban landscape of the now-vanished city of Northern-Wei Luoyang through advanced 3D modeling techniques. This initiative, a collaborative effort involving leading architectural historians and archaeologists, has facilitated in-depth scholarly research into the urban and architectural characteristics of Luoyang’s prominent structures. These include monasteries, pagodas, imperial palaces, ritualistic buildings, and city gates, each integral to understanding the city’s historical context.

The project’s first installation,Luoyang: the Imagescape, extends an invitation to audiences to engage with and explore the rich tapestry of Northern Wei Luoyang’s historical narrative. Structured around four pivotal historical moments, encapsulated in thematic chapters named Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire, the installation immerses viewers in a journey through the city’s layered memories. It aims to convey not only the stunning aesthetic grandeur but also the dynamic and often tumultuous history of Luoyang, providing a comprehensive sensory and intellectual encounter with this ancient metropolis.

永宁·绝响 Luoyang: the Soundscape

 

The second installation, Luoyang: the Soundscape, explores the acoustic fabric of Northern Wei Luoyang. Drawing upon historical documents and archaeological findings, the team examined the soundscape of daily life across Luoyang’s different zones—from the acoustic jubilance of urban festivals to the cacophonies of war and urban disasters. Collaborating with soundscape scholars across the globe, this installation recreates the historical and cultural experience of this city through the medium of sound. The audio installation is designed as an immersive sound theater. Its primary narrative centers upon the historical events around Yongning Monastery, which stood as Luoyang’s political and cultural hub. The Yongning Monastery, a Buddhist complex sponsored by the royal family, witnessed the grand Buddhist festivals in Luoyang’s heyday, as well as the wars and political turmoil that reduced the city to ruins. Through sound, listeners are immersed in the cultural and historical events of the Yongning Monastery and experience the arc of Luoyang’s dramatic history.

Visit
Visit
Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China