The Sistine Chapel is undeniably one of the most famous buildings in the world.
Ensconced in Vatican City, the chapel is where a conclave is convened to choose a new pope. Artistically, the chapel is just as important, with frescoes by some of the most acclaimed Renaissance artists, including a ceiling by the great Michelangelo.
Formerly, visiting the chapel meant purchasing a plane ticket and flying to the Vatican for a brief tour, alongside thousands of other tourists. However, through modern technology, it’s possible visit a virtual recreation of the chapel via computer through a non-competitive game called “Second Life.”
The architect of this three dimensional cyber chapel is Steve Taylor, Vassar College’s director of academic computing services. Taylor’s creation went live on the Web on July 2 and has since attracted more than 3,000 visitors. Pictures of the virtual chapel have been posted on a number of photographic Web sites, including www.flickr.com
Genesis of a chapel
Part of Taylor’s job description is helping faculty members figure out how to use new technology.
“I try to find new things to bring to their attention that they might not know are out there,” said Taylor.
No expert on Renaissance art, Taylor had previously helped former Vassar professor Jacqueline Musachhio in getting digital images of the chapel for a classroom slide presentation. Long after that project was completed, Taylor, at the instigation of Vassar vice president of computing and information services Bret Ingerman, joined Second Life, a site growing in popularity and brain stormed for an idea to serve as an example of the technology’s academic potential. Having gained an idea of the specifications for the chapel, Taylor set about making his creation.
“I had it in the back of my mind what this place looked like and it occurred to me that it would be a real interesting subject for a three-dimensional virtual rendering, because it’s full of paintings that have a spatial relationship with each other,” he said.
Another world
“Second Life” is a three-dimensional virtual environment that is free to join. Users create a virtual person, known as an avatar, who wanders around this world. For a fee, users can purchase virtual real estate and build structures that attract visitors. At any one time there are thousands of users from many countries logged on to the game
Users communicate with each other by instant messaging, a chat room or a new voice component through a microphone. The international aspect of the game gives users a chance to practice their foreign language skills. Taylor recently spent an hour touring through a recreation of Paris, circa 1900, with several Frenchmen.
“It was fun walking around with these French people, practicing my French,” he said.
Vassar has purchased an island on Second Life. The island includes a castle with an art gallery and several classrooms. There is also an amphitheater where professors can give lectures and a circular seminar area and a re-creation of Ferry House, a Vassar dormitory designed by modernist architect Marcel Breuer in the 1950s. There are also many vacant lots that could conceivably be used for a multiplicity of future projects.
Already, professors from other colleges have used the site to post lectures and Taylor sees more of this activity in the future. Second Life is accessible to the public by going to www.secondlife.com and using an e-mail address to create an account. There is no charge, but software from the site needs to be downloaded before it can be used. Once logged on, users create an avatar than can be personalized to varying degrees. A search function allows users to find Vassar’s island.
Before entering the chapel, users must agree to a code of conduct in which they agree to respect the holy nature of the chapel.
“We know that it represents a religious site and sometimes in second life, people can engage in some rowdy behavior,” said Taylor.
The making of the chapel
In constructing the chapel, Taylor contacted the owners of several photographic Web sites in order to gain permission to use photographs of the chapel. Some images were procured from books and had to be resized for the computer.
“Some parts were surprisingly easy. The Sistine Chapel is really just a box; a rectangle with very few structural adornments.
A trickier task for Taylor was to re-create was the curved roof and semi-circular curves on top of the windows called spandrels. Most of the chapel was created with rectangular prisms no greater than 512 pixels wide or tall. Another challenge was re-creating the ornate tiled floor.
“I had to piece together lots and lots of pictures, some of them snapshots taken by tourists in order to piece together the pattern to make up the floor,” said Taylor.
One aspect of the real chapel that visitors don’t often get to see are tapestries by the great Renaissance artist Raphael, which the Vatican owns but rarely displays. Taylor procured images of the tapestries and users can access the images when they visit the virtual chapel.
Taylor said the value of visiting the virtual chapel is that it is a different experience than looking at things in a book.
“A book is not good at showing the spatial relationships of things in a three-dimensional space. In Second Life, you can see that this painting is next to that painting and the ceiling is this high: things that are harder to get a sense of from a book. Also, in real life when you are part of crowd, its harder to appreciate the paintings because you only have a limited amount of time in the chapel,” he said.
Taylor has gotten good feedback and said he hopes his project will inspire professors to come up with their own applications of the technology.
“It’s been very gratifying that some people who have been to the real chapel think it’s a pretty good reproduction,” he said.