With VR through Lucerne's oldest church

Visitors to St Peter's Chapel in Lucerne have been able to move through Lucerne's oldest church with virtual reality glasses for a few days and experience it in a new way, for example with fireflies and candlelight or in the ambience of a Palestinian city.

St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, which was first mentioned in 1178, now also exists virtually: for the previous exhibition "Palacetine", researchers from the Immersive Realities Research Lab of the Lucerne University the interior of the church as a virtual reality environment. In the real as well as in the virtual church, photographs, videos and installations were on display, which were created within the framework of the interdisciplinary study module "Israel-Palestine" at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

VR enables exhibition, which was made impossible by Corona

The module of the Lucerne School of Art & Design actually envisaged a study trip to Palestine. But due to the Corona lockdown, everything turned out differently: "Instead of travelling to Bethlehem, we exchanged ideas with students and speakers in Bethlehem via Zoom," says Marco Schmid from St Peter's Chapel.

The theologian is studying part-time for a degree in art and education and initiated the module. Since the exchange now took place virtually, he had the idea for a VR exhibition and for the collaboration with the research team of the Department of Informatics. "We want to gain initial experience with this project," says Schmid. And it is the basis for possible further joint projects between the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and St Peter's Chapel.

In this project, the researchers also investigated what role the technologies VR and AR)could play for the institution of the church in the future. For example, VR could be used to visualise the architectural development of church buildings. The virtual staging of the nativity play and other religious scenes are also conceivable - especially in listed church rooms such as St Peter's Chapel.

VR to visualise architectural development

It would also be interesting to create a "virtual twin" for St Peter's Chapel. "Especially if you want to show architectural developments. As one of the oldest buildings in the city of Lucerne, the chapel is historically important: the first settlement was here, and on the right bank of the Reuss, the Chapel Bridge once reached directly in front of St. Peter's Chapel.

The fact that church and religion and VR go together has already been shown by various Projects.

Source: bluewin / hslu