Temporal Embodiment, Cultural Resonance and Digital Ritual in Lhasa Time

Abstract

Lhasa Time is a three-minute multimedia loop created for a 9-meter-tall steel Buddha statue at Weland Art Centre in Lhasa, Tibet, China. Its first exhibition date is March 27, 2025 and has been in permanent collection by the art centre. The inspiration comes from the famous Tibetan painting Tibetan Demon-Subduing Map, which is both a topographical map and a feng shui map of Tibet. Furthermore, this artwork uses projection mapping technology to integrate seven time-lapse images of Lhasa's landforms (sunrise, sunset, snow-capped mountains, etc.), so that the Buddha statue is like wearing different dynamic Buddha clothes at different time periods. This artwork explores how digital media enables “immersive time experience” and fuses cultural heritage. By responding to the “slow tempo” philosophy of the art centre with compressed time-lapse images, embodying the “causal reincarnation” in Tibetan Buddhism through a circular narrative, and deepening the audience’s sense of immersion with the help of Tibetan singing bowl soundscapes, this work creates an eco-spiritual “site-specific digital storytelling”.