The Buddha Tooth Project
 

The Concept

To make a documentary about the Buddha tooth,

Content

• The history about the Buddha Teeth

• The story about the Singaporean Monk and the  tooth from Myanmar

• The story about the Buddha tooth temple in Singapore. Design etc.

• The story about the cross religious visualization project.

Summary 

In June 2004 I was contacted by a friend of mine in Singapore. He told me the story about the Buddha tooth and the Singaporean Monk, who was donated one of Buddha’s teeth, from Myanmar, and brought it back to Singapore. My friend, who is a personal friend of the Monk, wanted to help him raise money for a new temple for the tooth.  

He asked me if I would be interested in helping them illustrate the temple, as this would make it easier for them to present the project, hence raise the money.  

The Virtual Temple 

I proposed to make a full Virtual Reality model of the temple. In this way it would be able to be shown on the internet, and people would be able to “Walk” around inside the temple in much the same way as in adventure games. The spectator would also be able to get additional information about the objects, meet the monk ,etc. The virtual model should i.e. work in pretty much the same way as the real thing.  

There are several interesting things in relation to the Virtual Temple; 

1.     It’s the first time such a temple has been made.

2.     It´s the first time a VR Temple will have the same religious status as a real temple. Meaning that the sick, the elderly, people fare away, would be able to worship the tooth no matter where they are. Worship is a mental thing anyway

3.     It’s very unusual, that people from various religions join forces to make a religious place for another religion.

As I have an ongoing collaboration with a Bangladeshi (Muslim) team of illustrators, I asked them to give an estimate on the price for making the VR model.  

In order to make the model, special software is needed. This software is developed by a Danish company (Christian) who we will ask to donate the software, against getting publicity in relation to the project.  

We will need to have a web-site for the temple. This will be made by a team in India, Hindu’s.  

The documentary

The uniqueness of the project, A tooth, the VR temple, the cross religious collaboration, could be interesting for a broadcasting service, like DR, TV2, or Discovery to follow. Hardly anyone in the Western world has any knowledge about the tooth, and even fewer about this particular tooth.  

An existing web-site at http://www.singaporebuddhatooth.org.sg/Index_English.shtml