Daniel Okechukwu Owhor (OO'Niel) is a digital artist and 3D environment creator whose practice explores the intersection of cultural heritage, digital reconstruction and immersive technology. He started his practice as a traditional sculptor before moving into digital mediums as tools for creative expression. Over the course of his career, he has built environments and art inspired by African cultural symbolism and spaces, most especially creating Afro-futuristic environments and lost sculptures. His professional and academic background equips him to approach digital environments with an understanding of form, material, space and  storytelling.

Through his practice, he investigates how digital tools can create new possibilities for engaging with cultural memory, interpreting historical spaces and expanding the ways African cultural heritage can be represented and experienced. Most of his works span  3D modelling, environment art, photogrammetry, digital sculpture and virtual reality. Using tools such as Agisoft Metashape, Blender, Unreal Engine and Substance 3D, he creates digital environments and representations of cultural objects.

Daniel's ongoing reconstruction of the Benin Kingdom explores how historical architecture and urban landscapes can be translated into three-dimensional worlds. His goal is to make them available as creative resources that other artists, game developers and storytellers can build upon. For heritage researchers, this would serve as a digital library for storytelling, testing hypothetical events and historical simulations.

Why am I building this?

My practice explores how three-dimensional art and immersive technologies can create new ways of engaging with cultural heritage. My interest lies in how historical environments can be reconstructed digitally, represented as spaces that can support new forms of creative expression and storytelling.

This reconstruction combines architectural modelling, environmental design, historical references, and culturally significant details to create a world that is lost to time. The project includes the palace's exterior and interior, surrounding city walls, landscape, roads, housing designs, and indigenous vegetation. It is an evolving work, guided by available historical evidence while acknowledging the interpretive decisions involved in rebuilding a historical environment in three dimensions.

I intend to make the finished environment available to other creators as a reusable digital resource. Artists, filmmakers, educators and game developers will be able to use it to develop their own stories and interactive experiences. The environment is not being created for a single predetermined narrative; it is intended to enable many possible interpretations.

Personally, this project is an exploration of how digital reconstruction can extend the creative life of cultural heritage. By translating a historical environment into a three-dimensional world, I hope to create opportunities for others to engage with, reinterpret, and tell stories within this cultural landscape.

Technical details:

• Medium: Digital 3D

• Tools: Unreal Engine, Blender, Adobe Photoshop, Substance 3D Painter and Designer.

• Landscape Dimensions: 884 x 884 meters