A Drama In Time: The Life of a City

Abstract

Cities are more than locations - they can be likened to living entities with lifespans of hundreds, or thousands, of years. Cities, like all places, are uniquely characterised by their topography and by the webs of history, cultural meanings and individual memories that overlay the architecture of homes, businesses, places of worship, civic buildings, streets, parks and public spaces. Cities are dynamic with daily, weekly and annual rhythms driving patterns of behaviours in flora, fauna and human inhabitants. At the same time cultural expression in all its forms, tangible and intangible, is equally dynamic. Time defines place - London during the 'Cool Britannia' period of the 1990s was different from the 'Swinging' London of the 1960s. Museums devoted to the history of a city often try to capture this dynamic aspect of the city by showing a series of snapshots using dioramas or illustrations. Computer generated 3D models are increasingly common but, curiously, these rarely use time which is an inherent capability of the medium. This paper reports on the creation of a time-based virtual heritage city and the results from testing with a museum audience. The Virtual Sydney Rocks consists of a dynamic and interactive virtual model of the built environment of the historic Rocks district of Sydney, Australia from 1788 to the present day. Users were able to take a tour, play a game or explore freely in space and time. Additionally they were able to set the speed of time and view timelapses. Virtual environments are known to engender presence, a sense of being physically present in the virtual world, and time-based virtual heritage allows the creation of culturally and phenomenologically richer virtual heritage places leading to memorable and affective engagements with heritage. While being able to go to a specific place at a specific time gives users a richer sense of place, travelling through time in a time-lapsed fashion reveals the evolution of place over timescales outside of normal human experience. Navigable time was shown to be a popular and powerful tool for creating affective experiences, engaging learning opportunities and fostering a deeper understandings of heritage places. Show more