Laser show at Bamiyan

An elaborate laser show plans to "recreate" Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddhas, the towering, 1600-year-old statues destroyed by the Taliban amid international outrage in 2001.

The life-size, lurid images will be projected on to the clay cliff faces of the Bamiyan Valley where the archaeological treasures originally stood on the Silk Road linking Europe and Central Asia.

Some 140 "statues" will make up the installation, due to premiere in June 2007, subject to approval by UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organisation.

Hiro Yamagata, 58, a Japanese-born California artist, wants to use wind and solar power to project the images on to 6.5 kilometres of the cliffs in the central Hindu Kush mountains, about 150 kilometres from Kabul. The Afghan Government supports the project.

UNESCO, which has a prominent presence in Bamiyan, where it has been evaluating methods of preserving mural paintings in man-made caves surrounding the Buddha sites, must ascertain whether the laser beams could damage the cliffs.

Carved into the mountainside, the two Buddhas were of international cultural significance. The larger of the two was, at 53 metres, thought to be the world's tallest standing Buddha. The smaller stretched to 35 metres and both were sheltered by giant niches hollowed from the rock.

The statues escaped damage during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the country's bitter civil war in the 1990s but in 2001 the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered them destroyed, although UNESCO said the act would be "a crime against culture". In March, militants used dynamite and artillery to blow up the fifth-century statues. The Taliban considered the Buddhas idolatrous and anti-Muslim. All that remains is rubble and the cavities in the cliff.

The demolition triggered calls for the rebuilding of the statues or some commemoration at the location, a site of pilgrimage for centuries because of the Buddhist monastic complex that flourished from the second to the eighth centuries. A Swiss plan to rebuild the Buddhas at $A37.5 million each was abandoned.

Mr Yamagata's $12 million installation will feature 14 laser systems casting overlapping, faceless images on to the cliffs every Sunday. [THE TELEGRAPH VIA SYDNEY MORNING HERALD]

A Swiss plan to rebuild the Buddhas at $A37.5 million each was abandoned.

Mr Yamagata's $12 million installation will feature 14 laser systems casting overlapping, faceless images on to the cliffs every Sunday.

I wonder what the point of this is? I saw an artist's impression of the display and it looked terrible. It didn't look religious and the Buddha images didn't have faces. I reckon the Swiss plan would be better value as long as the Taliban didn't seize power again.

I wonder what the point of this is? I saw an artist's impression of the display and it looked terrible. It didn't look religious and the Buddha images didn't have faces. I reckon the Swiss plan would be better value as long as the Taliban didn't seize power again.

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If it's any consolation, the destroyed Buddha images hadn't had faces in hundreds of years. Destroyed by previous religious zealots.

I saw the statues in all their glory back in the 70's....

Sorry for the qualiy of the photo but it's a scan of a badly deteriorated slide.

neat picture. Must have been an amazing place to visit. What can it have been like to live there in it's day???