Daejeon, July 27–31
It is well established by scholarship in the humanities that artworks cannot be seen simply as objects; rather, they must be understood as co-creating ritual, spatial, and sensual worlds. Not only visual, but auditory (chanting, bells), olfactory (incense, oil lamps), and kinesthetic elements come together to create these worlds. Kerala mural paintings, whose beginnings can be traced to the 8th century, play an important part in the architecture and devotion of the temples in the state of Kerala in South India (Sasibhooshan, 2019). The murals themselves, located inside temple architecture, serve as prime examples of the intertwining of image, place, and devotion. However, in light of the increasing remediation of Kerala mural paintings into the digital world, an interesting question becomes evident: What happens to a person's experience and interpretation of these paintings when the context of their viewing changes from being within a ritual, sacred, and/or architectural place to a digital place, such as a 360-degree environment? In this short paper, we will evaluate the design of a 360-degree virtual tour of murals inside a temple and an accompanying study of the audience, to explore how individuals engage with these categories in the virtual realm. Our work responds to ADHO 2026’s theme of “Engagement,” as it engages with 360-degree imaging as an experimental medium for investigating the renegotiation of the sacred presence and cultural authority within digital environments beyond their function as heritage resources.
Figure 1: Scene from the Virtual tour of Chemmanthatta Mahadeva temple. There are navigation markers in green and red, while information on the temple is obtained by clicking the marker in blue.
This work falls at the convergence point of conversations surrounding aura and reproduction, virtual heritage, and mediation of sacred art. Some key theoretical contributions have questioned the notion of the “aura” of an artwork and its reliance on material uniqueness and authenticity (Benjamin, 2001). They have suggested that mechanical reproduction destroys such aura by severing the object from its ritualistic roots. Later research explores the impact of digital and virtual reproduction on aura, in which 3D modeling and virtual reality offer an immersive reconstruction experience capable of regaining some level of presence. Kenderdine examines VR's role in simulating auratic encounters with sacred objects (Kenderdine & Yip, 2018). Recent work on Dunhuang caves demonstrates how digital panoramas and VR, reconstruct aura by reintegrating fragmented heritage into navigable spatial narratives, enhancing global access while prompting ethical questions about virtual sacrality(Zhang & Du, 2025).
Scholarship on digital religion and visual culture has shown that sacred images in online or virtual settings generate new, hybrid forms of devotion and spectatorship rather than simply losing their power (Campbell, 2020) (Hutchings, 2019). However, much of this research remains grounded in museum-based or Euro-American contexts, with limited empirical attention to how audiences experience sacredness, authenticity, and aura within non-Western, ritual environments.
This project addresses gaps by empirically testing aura, sacredness, and authenticity in a context-rich 360-degree Kerala temple tour, extending Benjaminian critiques and virtual heritage methods to non-Western ritual visuality through integrated audience reception data, while also examining how such findings may inform the study and interpretation of Kerala mural traditions.
This project builds on and extends these conversations in three main ways. First, it relocates the discussion of virtual aura and authenticity to the context of south Indian temple art, where concepts such as darśan, ritual proximity, and embodied temple practice shape expectations of what a “real” encounter with sacred imagery entails. Second, it combines practice-based design of a 360-degree virtual tour with an empirical user study that directly measures how participants describe aura, sacredness, and authenticity in relation to an immersive, context-rich digital experience, rather than inferring these from observational or purely theoretical accounts. Third, it tests whether spatially faithful 360 environments—where murals are experienced in relation to sanctum, thresholds, and ritual pathways—alter familiar critiques of digital reproduction by partially reconstructing aspects of sacred atmosphere and presence that are often thought to be non-transferable. In doing so, the project also considers how audience reception data can contribute to broader questions of interpretation, documentation, and digital preservation of mural traditions. In doing so, the project also considers how audience reception data can contribute to broader questions of interpretation, documentation, and digital preservation of mural traditions.
The study employs a mixed humanities and audience-research methodology. Panoramic photography of a temple interior with Kerala mural cycles was used to create a 360-degree virtual tour. A non-linear, marker-based navigation system that enables users to "walk" through important temple zones while preserving logical spatial logic was created by piecing together the panoramas. Articulate Storyline 360 was used to create this. This includes turning ritual progression towards the sanctum into marker-based progression through transitional areas, thus reproducing the experience of moving through temple spaces rather than accessing murals. This involved emphasizing not just the size but also the sightlines and relationship to ritual elements such as the sanctum, lamp pillars, and sacrificial altar to create a subjective experience like that of walking through the temples.
To measure participants' reactions to the virtual tour, an audience survey was conducted after completing the experience on their devices at home. There were around 100 participants, ranging in ages from 25-62, some familiar with Kerala temple culture while others had no knowledge of the tradition. An immediate post-tour questionnaire was linked to it digitally. Perceived authenticity was gauged via a Likert-scale questionnaire measuring faithfulness to the temple visit, trust in the digital version of the temple and murals, and any distortions. Perceived aura was assessed by having respondents rate presence, uniqueness, and how "special" they felt the murals were. Participants seem to understand the shortcomings in terms of sensory immersion; however, the preliminary findings suggest a feeling of spatial presence and comprehension of context formed as a result of navigating the virtual space in a certain structure.
This investigation recognizes the drawbacks of this type of study, primarily its inability to provide a full replication of the multisensory experience of the temple and the variability of interpretation among users depending on their culture-based knowledge about temples. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate how people perceive and engage with sacred heritage sites through immersive digital experiences and develop a replicable design method to incorporate audience research within digital heritage design. This design method is replicable for everyone who wants to create an intersection between digital heritage design and audience studies. Moreover, the project emphasizes the importance of Kerala mural paintings in revisiting the fundamental ideas of the field of Digital Humanities such as aura, authenticity, and engagement beyond the museums' boundaries. The paper argues that engagement with digital sacred heritage should be understood as a negotiated, culturally situated practice—one that continues to evolve as communities, technologies, and scholarly frameworks interact—by focusing on a south Indian temple context and referencing both regional religious ideas and international discussions on digital reproduction.