JP/Prodita Sabarini

Titus Leber has lived most of his life away from home, Austria. His multimedia skills have taken him from Europe to America and temporarily secured him a place in the royal court of Thailand.  

Now, the 59-year-old award-winning writer-director and multimedia creator has chosen Indonesia for his latest project, more precisely Borobudur.  

When recalling his first visit to Magelang’s Borobudur Temple in 1991, Leber remembered being overwhelmed by the temple and the thousands of images from the stone panels. “I was overwhelmed but I had no idea what I was seeing,” he said in an affluent Jakarta restaurant.  

“I walked to the top, took a few snapshots. I had the impression I’d seen something fantastic but didn’t have a clue, and didn’t understand what [at the time].”  

In the late 1990s, Thailand’s royal family invited him to work on a project initiated by the King of Thailand’s mother. At first, he was reluctant to accept the offer. His first experience of Thailand had been a terrible one and he had promised himself he would never set foot there again. However, with the promise of a place in the royal palace, unlimited funds, the best technicians, and state-of-the-art equipment, Leber agreed to take on the project.  

He ended up working for the royal family for four years and lived in Bangkok for more than 10.
He dedicated himself to another multimedia project about the life and the teaching of Buddha, titled What Did the Buddha Teach?, based on the mural paintings in the Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha).  

While the temple in Bangkok amazed him, Borobudur, he said, was much older and richer. “The temple in Thailand is very young, only around 300 years old, while Borobudur is 1,200 years old,” he said.  

The murals at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha describe Theravada Buddhism, while Borobudur’s stone panels include explanations of Theravada, Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism.  

“The logical consequence of the project in Thailand was to make the biggest Buddhist monument into an interactive project,” he said.  

Collaborating with the manager of Borobudur Temple state-owned PT Taman Wisata Borobudur, Leber will produce Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, and applications for computer, internet and mobile phones, as well as a TV-series about Borobudur. Several books on Borobudur are also awaiting publication.  

“We will bring every single panel and single story [sculpted on it] alive in 3D,” he said.  

Leber added he hoped to complete the first of a series on Borobudur by the end of the year. He also aims to make a multimedia encyclopedia of Borobudur, which he says would take several years to complete.  

Borobudur Temple is in its third phase, according to Leber. “The first one is when it was built. Phase two was when the Dutch and the government of Indonesia rediscovered and reconstructed it during the last hundred years,” he said.

“And now it’s almost back to its original splendor,” he said.  

However people around the world still don’t know much about Borobudur, he said.  

“They know it’s a historical monument. Maybe they know it’s the biggest Buddhist building in the world. But very few realize how much is inside Borobudur,” he said.

 “What fascinates me is that it has 1,400 panels, each one carrying a message,” he said.  

“When you look at Borobudur’s ground plan, there are different interpretations. Some people say it looks like Mount Meru, the center of the Buddhist universe. Others say it looks like a mandala. But… you could also say it looks like a computer chip with lots of information in it,” he said.  

Leber sees his role as translating the old images into new ones.

“Basically, the people who built the Borobudur over a thousand years ago did what we still do today.

They communicated with images. But their images were in stone. Our images are in pixels. So my role is to translate stone pictures to pixel images, through this new medium of multimedia, to bring the message Borobudur carries, the old messages of wisdom to a modern world in need,” he said.

Those messages are important to our modern world, Leber said. “We’re living in a world of so many extremes, while Buddha has always taught the middle way, the way of tolerance. The whole of Borobudur is about that. And that’s the message I want to bring to the world in every modern medium,” he said.  

For Christian-born Leber, Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion.  

“In terms of philosophy, I’m 100 percent a Buddhist. Because I think it has so many solutions, which preach tolerance.

“Buddha does not expect you to change your religion. It isn’t a problem if you’re a Muslim, or a Christian. You can be a Buddhist at the same time. It’s a philosophy,” he said.  

Leber finds the idea of reincarnation very appealing. “I find a lot of evidence in my own life that I must have been here in previous life. So it makes a lot sense to me.”

Leber and his wife have been in Indonesia for eight months, currently staying at the governor’s villa near Borobudur. Every day, they wake up to the view of Borobudur and
Mt Merapi.  

When a perfect light comes, he runs to the temple. “People think that stone is dead, but if you look at it, it changes its expression every second with the light,” he said.

Popular

Volcano erupts in North Sulawesi, hundreds evacuated

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

Ramadan boosts consumer confidence, retail sales