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“…visible landscapes are like icebergs: only a small proportion of their real substance lies above the surface…” – B.K. Roberts, 1987

Place-Hampi is a vibrant theatre for embodied participation in the drama of Hindu mythology set into a real-world landscape. PLACE-Hampi provides the setting for a stereographic virtual landscape, populated by sixteen cylinders enclosing a constellation of cinematic events in which the audience can participate, traverse and examine at will.

In addition, the visual landscape is contained within a spatial aural field (the third space) made from decoded ambisonic 360 degree recordings, enlivened by composition brought about by the audience’s activities and played back in real-time. This real-time interactive rendering and delivery system will use sophisticated mapping and transformation strategies as the user controls and navigates the space, to deliver a sonic experience, which is intimately and deeply connected with the visually presented and augmented space. This articulates an unprecedented level of viewer co-presence in the narrative exploration of a virtual cultural landscape.

Place-Hampi is highly significant for promoting dialogues of engagement embedded in the imagery of a cultural landscape and activating the knowledge contained there. Hampi today continues to be an active pilgrim site, not simply an historic place. Each day its landscape and temples are activated through various rituals and tapas specific to time, place and to discrete locations in the complex. As part of a living tradition, the interpretation of the site by pilgrims is in a constant state of re-definition within the broad tenants of Hinduism. A conversation takes place between mythological characters and the sacred objects/sites/natural features permeated with the contemporary “folkloric imagination” of the pilgrims.

Hindi priests and pilgrims are not the only ones to enliven these Hindu images and temples. Bringing with them different religious assumptions, political agendas and economic motivations, others may animate the same objects or sovereignty as polytheistic “idols”, as “devils” as potentially lucrative commodities, as objects of sculptural art, as archaeological and historical relics, or attribute to them meanings and associations never foreseen by the image maker or votary. As Davies points out “the location of an object plays a constitutive role in the act of looking” in addition to this appropriation, relocation and redisplay of an object will dramatically alter its significance for new audiences. The frame of reference or dispensation designates the historically grounded and socially shared understandings of systems. Place-Hampi reconstitutes the landscape for these interpretations of mythological narratives in the form of co-presence, enabling a new mode of interpretation accessible for diverse cultural audiences.