Pure Land immerses visitors in the quintessential heritage of hundreds of Buddhist grotto temples, an art treasury abounding with murals, statues and architectural monuments. This UNESCO World Heritage site, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas is located at Dunhuang, a small town in northwestern China that is an oasis in the Gobi desert. It was a gateway to and from China on the ancient Silk Road, which carried trade between China, western Asia and India from the 2nd century BC until the 14th century AD for over 1000 years.
Using pioneering virtual reality technology, artists and scientists at CityU have developed an extraordinary new animated 3D experience. Visitors are immersed in a large 360-degree panoramic projection theatre that gives a true-to-life experience of being inside a cave temple and seeing its magnificent Buddhist wall paintings at one-to-one scale. Figures and objects in these paintings are dramatized by means of spectacular interactive 3D animations and digital effects that reveal their painterly beauty and underlying narrative meanings.
Pure Land Brochure
Pure Land brings to life the story painted as a single composition on the north wall of Cave 220, known as Bhaisajyaguru’s Eastern Paradise. The detailed mural depicts the paradise Eastern Pure Land of the Medicine Buddha, Bhaisajyaguru. It shows the seven forms or emanations that Bhaisajyaguru can assume as a healer. They stand in a row on lotus platforms with a pool below alongside numerous musicians that are accompanying four performing dancers. The Bhaisajyaguru sutra tells of the twelve great vows of the Buddha, relating to the provision of food, drink, clothing, medicine, and spiritual aids. Devotees were encouraged to light lamps in worship and this is depicted in this painting to either side of the musicians and in the altar with lamps between the dancers.