New Shroud of Turin App launches today!
Friday, March 29, 2013
By Carol Andrade
Promises to make viewing the ultimate digital experience for iPhone and iPad users
A new application, the Shroud 2.0, designed and produced by Italian company Haltadefinizione, which promises to make a digital examination of what is possibly Christianity’s most powerful symbol a much more intense experience than exposition or Museum visit, is to be launched today for iPad and iPhone.
This will be available to anybody at any time, all over the world.
The launch has been timed a day ahead of Pope Emeritus Benedict VI’s last gift to his flock before he went into retirement last month. There is to be a special exposition of the famous Shroud of Turin for a single hour on the Italian television station Rai Uno on Holy Saturday. The first and last time it was seen on television was 40 years ago, hence the eagerness with which this event is awaited is phenomenal. This time, the exposition will be broadcast in the late afternoon (Italian Standard Time).
The Shroud App, authorised by the Turin Archdiocese in collaboration with the Diocesan Commission for the Holy Shroud and the Holy Shroud Museum, however, promises to take the experience much further than a single Exposition. It will make available the chance to actually see the relic constantly, as and when one wishes, using the company’s special high-definition photography technology already being used in the field of art.
For instance, the Haltadefinizione Project, supported by the company along with the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Italian Department of Culture, allows you to zoom in on great works of art to examine them in great detail. How great?
According to the Vatican website, www.news.va , the digitalization process for da Vinci’s Last Supper and some of Botticelli’s work involved “recomposing 1,648 snapshots into one single 12 billion pixels image, held in a 72 Gigabyte file corresponding to the content of 16 DVDs”!
This means it could make more sense to actually view the Shroud of Turin via the App, if one is looking for the ultimate viewing, never possible in a Museum and certainly not during an Exposition, when the challenge is to keep devotees moving.
Come this Saturday and iPad and iPhone users will be able to examine “other features of the Shroud that are practically invisible to the naked eye, elements that not even traditional Expositions have ever allowed devotees to observe”, says the Vatican website.
Besides an exploration of every inch of the Shroud, “users will also be conducted on a knowledge and meditation journey by the technological device.” Aimed at enhancing “the understanding of the cloth in an interactive and dynamic way through a virtual tour”, the application will be available in Italian, English, Portuguese and Spanish. Navigation will be along four theme routes: the story from the Gospels, elements of the cloth, elements of the figure and the scientific aspects of the relic which has been the subject of intense debate for the last 600 years.
The App will come in two versions, free and with a fee. And while the paid version promises “the utmost level of display, the free version will “offer a suggestive perspective of the Shroud accompanied by the Evangelical background of which it is witness”. Finally, while it is currently offered on iPad and iPhone, it will likely be offered for Android users as well.
This will be available to anybody at any time, all over the world.
The launch has been timed a day ahead of Pope Emeritus Benedict VI’s last gift to his flock before he went into retirement last month. There is to be a special exposition of the famous Shroud of Turin for a single hour on the Italian television station Rai Uno on Holy Saturday. The first and last time it was seen on television was 40 years ago, hence the eagerness with which this event is awaited is phenomenal. This time, the exposition will be broadcast in the late afternoon (Italian Standard Time). The Shroud App, authorised by the Turin Archdiocese in collaboration with the Diocesan Commission for the Holy Shroud and the Holy Shroud Museum, however, promises to take the experience much further than a single Exposition. It will make available the chance to actually see the relic constantly, as and when one wishes, using the company’s special high-definition photography technology already being used in the field of art.
For instance, the Haltadefinizione Project, supported by the company along with the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Italian Department of Culture, allows you to zoom in on great works of art to examine them in great detail. How great?
According to the Vatican website, www.news.va , the digitalization process for da Vinci’s Last Supper and some of Botticelli’s work involved “recomposing 1,648 snapshots into one single 12 billion pixels image, held in a 72 Gigabyte file corresponding to the content of 16 DVDs”!
This means it could make more sense to actually view the Shroud of Turin via the App, if one is looking for the ultimate viewing, never possible in a Museum and certainly not during an Exposition, when the challenge is to keep devotees moving.
Come this Saturday and iPad and iPhone users will be able to examine “other features of the Shroud that are practically invisible to the naked eye, elements that not even traditional Expositions have ever allowed devotees to observe”, says the Vatican website.
Besides an exploration of every inch of the Shroud, “users will also be conducted on a knowledge and meditation journey by the technological device.” Aimed at enhancing “the understanding of the cloth in an interactive and dynamic way through a virtual tour”, the application will be available in Italian, English, Portuguese and Spanish. Navigation will be along four theme routes: the story from the Gospels, elements of the cloth, elements of the figure and the scientific aspects of the relic which has been the subject of intense debate for the last 600 years.
The App will come in two versions, free and with a fee. And while the paid version promises “the utmost level of display, the free version will “offer a suggestive perspective of the Shroud accompanied by the Evangelical background of which it is witness”. Finally, while it is currently offered on iPad and iPhone, it will likely be offered for Android users as well.
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