ABSTRACT
This essay investigates the digital pipeline necessary to collate ambiguous and fragmentary evidence from diverse sources and locations, and presents work on the modelling and visualization of some of the earliest Brahmanic/Hindu temple sites constructed between the fifth and eight centuries ce in India, Cambodia, Java, and Myanmar. The outputs of the reconstructed temples not only reveal the philosophies, world views, and design experimentation of this ancient corpus but also enable a wider community experience of ancient connections through architecture. The aim of the reconstructions is the informed restoration, conservation, and interpretation of temple monuments through mapping the ancient legacy of diasporic movement between South and Southeast Asia. The digital methods presented in this essay address three aspects of digital heritage: the reconstruction of compositional or elemental patterns that exist within a singular monument, the recognition of architectonic connections between existing sets of architectural monuments, and the use of new representation techniques of immersive visualisation, which enable scholars, students, and the community to engage with the representations through interactive digital interfaces.
