La Basilica Di San Pietro
unlocked.microsoft.com
unlocked.microsoft.com
Maybe with WebGL and Gaussian Splats that can still be the case. But it’s also a ZIRP kind of project. Awesome, but what’s the business model?
Any idea how accurate the pitch was compared to the reality?
Few sights of man-made things have instilled as much awe in me as La Basilica Di San Pietro and most of them are also in Rome (namely the Pantheon and Moses @ Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli).
But to me, despite all of this, there was a lot of sadness in that experience - because you know how desperately poor common folks were, how instead of building such status mega symbol they could have done some proper good. But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money of that world and trying to show how above everybody else they were.
You can see miniature scale of this in literally every (also non-) older European village or town - religious buildings have received by far the most funding and care, sometimes overshadowing kings castles themselves. Cathedrals were always built to impress masses, and this one is just on top of the game, by huge margin for good reasons I believe.
Kind of like the church in America today.
This is a tired caricature. We live in comfortable times. Materially, in many way, we are much more comfortable today than kings were back then. The world was different then, and it is irresponsible to project anachronistic categories onto a period of history that operated differently. And that somehow there exists a conflict between building magnificent churches and dealing with poverty is simply nonsense (indeed, poverty was dealt with through tithing and donations and by convents and monasteries with that charism; the first hospitals, for example, were founded by nuns, hence why in many languages the word for nurse is still "sister"). You can do both, hence the corporal works of mercy and spiritual works of mercy. Magnificent churches were not somehow the private property of some caricaturish class of clerical villains (who had no heirs, legitimate ones, anyway). They were the common patrimony of the Church. They were often constructed over long periods of time by the people in the community. They gave everyone, especially the poor, the possibility of witnessing and experiencing beautiful art and architecture that might otherwise only be accessible to the very richest of the magnates (and I challenge you to find a magnate who owned anything as spectacular as St. Peter's).
(Even today, you hear people ask the silly question "why doesn't the Church sell all its artwork and give the money to the poor?". If you allow that question to sink in for a moment, it becomes clear how preposterously silly it is to ask it. So you sell it. Then what? Now, these artworks are the property of private collectors or state institutions. Is that what you want? And the money: you think that will somehow "end poverty"? After food is digested, one's hunger returns. Far greater sums have been expended on the poor. The poor will always be with us. It is something we must continuously deal with. Robbing them of access to beautiful artwork, and depriving the Catholic faithful of their patrimony, is a pretty shitty solution, if it can even be called that.)
Frankly, what I find shameful is that we are richer than we're ever been, and yet we can't seem to produce anything that approaches the beauty of these old cathedrals. We have monks in Wyoming who are using CNC stone carving to build a gothic monastery[0], for crying out loud! We've never been in a better position to build beautiful things and cheaply at scale. And that's kind of the message of these buildings. It's not the material wealth per se, but the magnanimity of spirit that made this beauty possible and the spiritual awe it continues to inspire to this day. It's a condemnation of our vulgarity, of our consumerism. Even the churches we build today usually look like shit. If that's not cultural decadence, I don't know what is.
Well said. Beautiful things like these are a massive gift to humanity, and by all rights we should be able to do even more projects like them. Hopefully one day we will rediscover that drive and build new things which will enrich not just ourselves, but future generations.
I'm not religious at all, however I was deeply moved by many basilica throughout Italy and Spain, as I was by the Pantheon, the aqueducts at Segovia, etc. It's hard to look upon such feats and not feel awe.
These works of art are more a reflection of the artist than they are of the faith (to me atleast). Sure they exist because of the vanity of the church, this I don't dispute but many things in this life exist for the wrong reasons and yet are still intensely beautiful.
Have you considered the idea that these could be considered jobs programs? It took a lot of masons, carpenters, ox/horse handlers, rope makers, quarrymen, etc, to run the supply chain for building this over the course of many, many decades. Just moving the obelisk to its current location took hundreds of men:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_obelisk#History
Further, now, even centuries later, all of this architecture and art is helping the local with a fairly vibrant tourism industry.
Beauty, in addition to being a good in itself:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals
also has practical benefits.
> But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money of that world and trying to show how above everybody else they were.
The other option was to be rolled over by secular powers (princes, kings, emperors). If you think politics is nasty now, it was a (often literal) blood sport back in the day.
If God exists, you think he would want you to sacrifice and spend it all on gold and salaries of locals ?
In the historical context of other religions in the region demanding human sacrifices that is the message of the story.
And almost every other religion also practices sacrifice in one form of the other, so if God exists, the one thing that we can be sure about is that he does expect sacrifice.
I was there two weeks ago. The tour guide took us through a route that bypassed the longer lines and through some underground areas—culminating in an entrance that completely blew my mind. I never realized how huge the interior was until I stepped in and saw it firsthand. There are few things in my life that completely took my breath away, this ranks in the top 5 for sure.
And oh my, the Pantheon. My wife saved it for a surprise as the family walked through Rome. We approached it from the back. To me it was just another dirty old building from that angle. She hustled me through the entrance while I was keeping track of the kids so I had no clue. I… I may have wept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth
https://medium.com/@dddexperiments/why-i-preserved-photosynt...
Classic photogrammetry was always a mixed bag in terms of results (especially if trying to construct meshes), but even before NeRFs (Neutral Radiance Fields) and Gaussian Splatting there was a ton of work using neural nets to handle various parts and I doubt that many modern tools avoid using them.
So in a way, these fields actually made use of neutral nets/"AI" (honestly more relevant imho than most of the LLM stuff).
Incredible work.
The work in the related stories are equally gorgeous. Thanks for sharing mate.
(not just the basilica di san pietro)
i might just want to do that for my own private use (or i might be okay with law infringement).
if they like your project and see some value in it for themselves, they might even give you the contact of the designer / architect to get files
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora...
What problem did this actually solve? If there is one, we managed to live with it for the prior two centuries.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/05/student-creates-count...
But the success of GS and speeding up should rekindle some interest and let us use some of the advances in making "production ready" methods.
Example: https://twitter.com/phyronnaz/status/1549869716826689539
If inornate churches that look more like strip malls and expo centers are so much better for the laity then imagine how much more good it would do for the top brass, relieving them of the burden of having to look at all that sacred art all day long. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
It's hard to imagine the Catholic church being as prominent in the world as it once was, of course, but as member myself, the last couple of years give me hope that we might again start growing.
Of course it only adds to the decline when the hierarchy builds as if going to Mass is no different from a trip to the mall or seeing a show.
There’s also the hypothesis that if the Church gets prestigious awards for their avant-garde architecture people will finally start liking the Church again.
The only thing funnier than witnessing a Catholic mass while having no idea of what it's like beforehand is the idea that some people still fervently argue for the masses to be exclusively in Latin. Because if there's one thing better than medieval LARPing, it's medieval LARPing in a dead language.