VSim: Flying through the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

This project is one accomplished during a “Virtual Environments and 3D Modeling” class taught by Professor Lisa M. Snyder that I took as an elective course for the Digital Humanities graduate certificate. Our mission was to use VSim to interact with and create teaching or learning resources about a virtual environment. VSim is a highly detailed interactive software for real-time engagement with models that supports the type of sustained exploration necessary to engage students and engender meaningful learning. After learning how to navigate around the models using the program, we picked a virtual environment to use as the basis for the project. We were able to select a UCLA-developed 3D model (Digital Karnak, Pantheon, Roman Forum, Compostela, Street in Cairo, and north edge of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893) in order to create both narrative files and embedded resource files about the chosen environment. I selected a 3D reconstruction of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. The reconstruction was conceived out of my home department, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, here at UCLA. The catalyst for the project was a course taught by Professor Dagenais (Spanish 122) in conjunction with Northwestern University in 1995. They created a website that traces the famous pilgrimage to the cathedral in Galicia, Spain and associate relevant readings to different stops along the trail. Soon, Professor Dagenais expanded the scope of his project:

“UCLA Professor John Dagenais both developed a website for use in an introductory course in Medieval Spanish literature and initiated a virtual reconstruction of the cathedral as an ongoing research project for students in a summer-session class studying and traveling the pilgrimage route. The computer model shows the building as it appeared when dedicated by Bishop Pedro Muñoz on April 3, 1211 A.D. The model also features embedded spatialized songs and sounds to recreate the experience of the building in the thirteenth century.”

For my exploration of the virtual environment using VSim, I wrote a narrative that was the equivalent length of a short paper, but staged within the computer model. While VSim is designed for real-time exploration of the narratives and embedded resources within a 3D environment, a user must install the platform to their machines in order to view the materials. I have provided a screen capture video of my navigation through the narrative and resources I created for the Cathedral.

The current incarnation of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral model is a collaboration between Professor Dagenais, the UCLA Experimental Technologies Center (ETC), IDRE, the University of Pittsburgh, and governmental agencies in Galicia, Spain. Both ETC and IDRE maintain webpages dedicated to the project. By utilizing VSim to create the virtual cathedral, users will be able to view a digital model of the cathedral as it stood in the 13^th century. Currently users do not have the ability to interact with the model, as the project is still under construction, but the simulate-fly through gives the audience a feel for what the final project will resemble. The ETC site notes that a virtual tour is forthcoming.

The reconstruction project was conceived of and built through the collaboration of a variety of institutes in the academe and was recognized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010. The project was discussed in conjunction with the museum’s celebration of the “holy year of Santiago de Compostela, when the Feast Day of Saint James the Greater—July 25—falls on a Sunday.” In a presentation entitled: “Romanesque Redivivus: A Full-Scale 3D Computer Reconstruction of the Medieval Cathedral and Town of Santiago de Compostela” (November 14, 2010), Professor Dagenais explains the research objectives in recreating the cathedral. Specifically, they wanted to draw comparison and remark on the differences between what a present-day visitor encounters when visiting the cathedral in an urban environment to how a medieval pilgrim in the 12^th century would have perceived and experienced it 800 years ago. This presentation at the Metropolitan Museum demonstrates how these models and virtual environments bridge together seemingly disparate disciplines such as architecture, literature and art. Even though the project is currently in its second phase and the modeling has not been completed, researchers are clearly on their way to meeting the research goals specified by Professor Dagenais to recreate the realities of the cathedral for the medieval pilgrim.

VSim

2014