Visitors to the Irish Museum of Modern Art yesterday got an eerie glimpse into the life of the world's most notorious terrorist.
A virtual model of a house used by Osama bin Laden was the centrepiece of The House of Osama bin Laden, a new exhibition by London-based artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell.
The artists took hundreds of photographs of the house near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, during a trip to the country in October 2002. Bin Laden is believed to have lived in the house for a short time in the late 1990s.
The artists used the photographs, together with a powerful computer graphics program, to construct a three- dimensional representation of the house and grounds. A joystick in the middle of the exhibition space allows viewers to explore the computer-generated environment.
The graphics program is the same one used to make Quake, a popular computer game in which players wander through realistic 3D environments shooting at monsters or at each other.
Langlands said the resemblance between their 3D model and the violent game was intentional. "We've taken the adrenaline out of the thing. You are left with this surreal place and you are wondering, 'Who is this guy? Is he real? Is he a figment of our imagination?'"
A separate room chronicles the murder trial of a notorious Afghan guerilla commander using a combination of still photographs and untranslated segments of video tape.