Digital art exhibition displays ‘Deep Fakes’ of heritage sites at risk

Lausanne, Switzerland, Oct 7 (EFE).- Traveling to some of the world’s most precious heritage sites is not an option for many, but a digital art exhibition in Switzerland offers visitors an alternative view.

‘Deep Fakes: Art and Its Double’ allows visitors to ‘travel’ to faraway places to experience them through virtual reality and advanced technology.

The 21 installations at the EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne represent digital replicas of UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the globe as well as pan-Asian art and architecture.

China’s Mogoa Caves are one of the sites that people can ‘visit’ through an installation that provides detailed life-sized replications of the 220 caves. The work uses high-resolution archaeological data from the caves, allowing visitors to admire drawings and sculptures in augmented reality through a tablet.

The first part of the exhibition showcases 19 installations that engage with “cross-cutting themes” such as mirrorworlds, digital twins, cryptocurrency, machine intelligence, mimesis, reenactment, memory and decolonization.

In the other pavilion, heritage sites at risk are ‘re-presented’.

“A series of sites that are depicted in this exhibition are sites that have been subject to terrorist activity or climate change catastrophe or are on verge of mass tourism catastrophe,” curator of the exhibition Sarah Kenkerdine, told Efe.

The digital replicas, which Kekerdine says are the “custodians of the original works”, show the site before, during and after these catastrophic events.

“It also gives us the ability to travel to these places and how profound they are and what a profound loss it would be, it gives us that emotiv insight into why we should protect heritage,” she said.

The title of the exhibition was chosen by Kenkerdine to provoke the art world and attract people to the exhibition.