Tabernacle-Game world

Tabernacle is an experimental game world-building project which explores the relationship between the map and the 3-dimensional visualisation enabled by high-end game engines. The project is named after the 6th century tabernacle maps of Cosmas Indicopleustes in his Christian Topography. These maps articulate a cultural or metaphoric, rather than measured view of the world, contravening Alper's distinction which observes that “maps are measurement, art is experience”. The project builds on previous research into the use of game engines and 3D navigable representation to enable cultural experience, particularly non-Western cultural experiences and ways of seeing. Like the earlier research, Tabernacle highlights the problematic disjuncture between the modern Cartesian map structures of the engine and the mapping traditions of non-Western cultures. Tabernacle represents a practice-based research provocation. The project exposes assumptions about the maps which underpin 3D game worlds, and the autocratic tendencies of world construction software. This research is of critical importance as game engines and simulation technologies are becoming more popular in the recreation of culture and history. A key learning from the Tabernacle project was the ways in which available game engines – technologies with roots in the Enlightenment - constrained the team’s ability to represent a very different culture with a different conceptualisation of space and maps. Understanding the cultural legacies of the software itself is critical as we are tempted by the opportunities for representation of culture and history that they seem to offer. The project was presented at Perth Digital Arts and Culture in 2007 and reiterated using a different game engine in 2009. Further reflections were discussed in a conference paper presented at OZCHI 2009 and a peer-reviewed journal article, and insights gained from the experience continue to inform the author’s research.

Della Robbia Tabernacle

Detail from the Della Robbia Tabernacle. 15th Century Painted Sculpture

The President's fast : a discourse upon our national crimes and follies, preached in the Broadway Tabernacle Church, January 4, 1861 /

Mode of access: Internet.

Tabernacle of Cherves, closed

Metalwork, French, 13C; 2 ft. 8 63/64 in.x 1 ft. 7 49/64 in.x 10 3/4 in.; copper, engraved, repoussé, gilt; champlevé enamel on modern wood mount

Tabernacle of Cherves, open position

Metalwork, French, 13C; 2 ft. 8 63/64 in.x 1 ft. 7 49/64 in.x 10 3/4 in.; copper, engraved, repoussé, gilt; champlevé enamel on modern wood mount

Tabernacle of Cherves, open position, right wing

Metalwork, French, 13C; 2 ft. 3 23/64 in.x 9 31/64 in.; copper, engraved, repoussé, gilt; champlevé enamel on modern wood mount

Tabernacle of Cherves, open position, left wing

Metalwork, French, 13C; 2 ft. 3 1/8 in.x 9 3/8 in.; copper, engraved, repoussé, gilt; champlevé enamel on modern wood mount

Tabernacle of Cherves, open position, center, close view

Metalwork, French, 13C; copper, engraved, repoussé, gilt; champlevé enamel on modern wood mount

The art of illustration : being addresses delivered to the students of the Pastor's College, Metropolitan Tabernacle.

Mode of access: Internet.

Addresses delivered in New-York by Rev. Wm. Arthur, A.M., with a biographical sketch of the author. Also the address of Rev. Dr. Adams, at the Broadway tabernacle ...

Mode of access: Internet.

American liberty : its sources, its dangers, and the means of its preservation : an oration, delivered at the Broadway Tabernacle, in New-York, before the order of United Americans, on the 22d of February, A.D. 1850, being the 118th anniversary of the birthday of Washington /

Mode of access: Internet.

Correspondence between the First Church and the Tabernacle Church in Salem : in which the duties of churches are discussed and the rights of conscience vindicated.

Mode of access: Internet.