Temporal Manipulation of the Duomo
An interactive installation where users use hand gestures to swipe between daytime and nighttime 3D scans of the Duomo di Milano, transforming the cathedral into a responsive digital lightfield.
Presented at:
Team Members
Josette Seitz — XR Engineer — https://www.josetteseitz.com
Ian Wallace — Creative Technologist — https://www.instagram.com/ijkwxyz
Project Summary
“Temporal Manipulation of the Duomo” explores how human gestures can interact with large-scale spatial data. Using Gaussian splat scans of the Duomo captured with an XGRIDS PortalCam during both daytime and nighttime, the cathedral becomes an interactive digital artifact. With Ultraleap hand tracking, participants swipe through time, transitioning the Duomo between day and night with the movement of their hands. The project invites participants to physically shape how digital representations of real-world spaces are experienced. Users transition between these two states, revealing architecture as something that can be explored, manipulated, and experienced through the body.
Project Category (Optional)
· Interactive installation
· Data visualization
· 3D Media
Vision
How does your project express a perspective on The New Human?
A future where humans interact directly with spatial data through natural gestures comes into focus here. By swiping between day and night across a digital reconstruction of the Duomo, the body becomes an interface for navigating and shaping the memory of real-world places.
Exploration
What are you experimenting with or discovering through this project?
“Temporal Manipulation of the Duomo” investigates how large-scale cultural landmarks can be transformed into interactive digital artifacts. Through gesture-based interaction with Gaussian splat scans of the Duomo, it explores how spatial computing can allow people to physically navigate, manipulate, and reinterpret real-world environments captured as data.
Collaboration
How does your project involve collaboration between people, disciplines, or systems?
This project is the result of collaboration between spatial capture, creative coding, and interaction design. Josette Seitz captured the Duomo di Milano using an XGRIDS PortalCam scanner and processed the Gaussian splat data, while Ian Wallace integrated the scans into TouchDesigner to create the interactive environment. Together with Ultraleap hand tracking, the system allows participants to interact with architectural data through gestures, blending physical scanning, real-time graphics, and human-computer interaction.
Art and Technology
How do art and technology interact in your project?
Advanced spatial capture and real-time interaction transform a historic landmark into an artistic medium. Gaussian splat scans of the Duomo, captured with an XGRIDS PortalCam and rendered in TouchDesigner, create a living digital representation of the cathedral. Ultraleap hand tracking allows viewers to physically interact with the data, turning technology into a tool for exploring architecture through gesture, light, and movement.
Depth
What deeper reflection or question does your project raise?
As places are increasingly captured and reconstructed as data, architecture begins to exist in both physical and digital form. Gesture-based interaction raises questions about how humans will experience cultural landmarks in the future—whether we will simply observe them, or actively shape how they are explored and remembered.
White Mirror
How does your project imagine a positive, human-centered future?
Spatial computing can bring people closer to places rather than distancing them. Interacting with a digital reconstruction of the Duomo through natural gestures imagines a future where technology deepens our connection to cultural landmarks and shared memory.
Software / AI / Data
· TouchDesigner
· Gaussian Splat (3D radiance field) processing
· Point cloud / spatial scan data from XGRIDS
· Real-time gesture interaction mapping
Hardware / Sensors
· XGRIDS PortalCam
· Ultraleap Leap Motion Controller
· Computer / GPU workstation for real-time rendering
Media / Output
· Interactive 3D Gaussian splat visualization
· Gesture-controlled spatial experience
· Real-time transition between daytime and nighttime scan states
· Interactive installation / digital art experience
Other Tools or Materials
· Duomo di Milano spatial scan dataset (captured on site in Milan)
· Collaboration between spatial capture and creative coding
Project Demo / How to Experience It
How should people experience or interact with your project?
Participants stand in front of a monitor and use hand gestures tracked by an Ultraleap Leap Motion controller to interact with a 3D Gaussian splat scan of the Duomo. Swiping their hand left or right transitions the cathedral between daytime and nighttime states in real time, allowing viewers to experience the architecture as an interactive field of spatial data.
What’s Next?
If you continued developing this project, what would be the next step?
The next step would be to develop the project into an installation presented in Milan, where locals could interact with a digital reconstruction of their iconic cathedral. By bringing the work back to the place where it was captured, the project could offer a new way for the community to engage with the Duomo through gestures and spatial computing.
Anything Else You’d Like to Share
Is there anything else that would help people understand your project?
As stated, the Duomo scans were captured on-site in Milan during both daytime and nighttime, inspiring the idea of allowing viewers to transition between two moments of the same place through gesture. Software like TouchDesigner integrates the spatial data to enable real-time interaction. The work explores how spatial scanning and gesture-based interfaces can create new ways of experiencing cultural landmarks as interactive digital environments and invites collaboration with artists and technologists working in spatial computing and interactive media.
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