Digital Environments: Design, Heritage and Architecture
<< Contents

Michael Grant and Gary Ennis

Virtual Heritage: Does the Past have a Presence in the Future?

Keywords: CAD, Multimedia, Virtual Reality, Internet, Tourism, Architecture

 

Introduction

The ever-expanding growth in world tourism is raising new issues within the tourism and leisure sectors. International tourist arrivals in 1995 were 563 million and are expected to reach 1.6 billion by the year 2020. These forecasts are based on a conservative growth rate, in the event, actual numbers may be significantly higher.

In particular, there is a growing concern about the conservation of our heritage and an increasing focus on the need to control the physical impact of tourism on heritage sites. An example of this concern was seen at a recent summit meeting in Santiago, where world leaders approved a Global Code of Ethics for Tourism with the intention of protecting the earth's natural environment and cultural heritage from the non-stop growth of international tourism.

This situation poses new and increasing acute problems for those charged with the twin tasks of both exploiting and conserving our architectural heritage. While these roles have gone hand in hand for many years, there is now a very real danger that, as a critical mass on the demand side is exceeded, these two functions will become mutually exclusive. Heritage operators are now looking to the new emerging information technologies as a possible way of addressing these needs.

Defining Virtual Heritage

In order to define Virtual Heritage, we must first understand the concept of Virtual Reality (VR). VR (an overly used and underly understood term) is an information technology which can provide a convincing experience of environments which:

• Exist, but are too remote, costly or hazardous to visit.
• Don't yet exist but are planned, such as architectural designs or urban plans.
• Never will exist, other than in the imagination.
• Existed in the past and are now threatened or already lost.

Virtual Heritage has its focus on the latter category, putting it in the context of the broader spectrum of simulated experiences of past, present and future environments of cultural significance. Anything that is, or once was, 'real' can be made 'virtually' on a computer; within the limits of our experience and technologies. An increasing range of heritage objects can now be made more understandable using virtual reality, which enhances our experience in the present so we can increase our understanding of the past.

New technology has also brought the benefits of VR to an increasingly wide user base on low-end hardware platforms. The key elements of quality graphics and real time interactivity, coupled with large amounts of descriptive media are no longer the preserve of high end systems. This will undoubtedly fuel the uptake of VH experiences and help push back the boundaries of the state of the art.

The case for a virtual heritage

Evidence suggests that much of this concept is indeed already with us. A major swing towards the use of new media can be gauged by the presence of over 580 different sites on the Internet, describing properties approved by the World Heritage Committee to be included on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Coupled with the plethora of museum/history sites on the web, such an IT based approach will continue to ensure that this activity is demand driven. The provision of new media directed towards this domain serves to address a number of problems.

Education, particularly in architecture and design, is rooted in the past. Much of architectural learning is retrospective, with modern design methods and practices based on their precedents. Students are encouraged to look at examples from the past for both inspiration and evidence of good practice. The provision of exemplary subjects has long been the goal of many educational architectural texts and it is plain to see that IT has a role to play in the move away from traditional paper based formats to more modern electronic archives.

Archiving, every year many important buildings are lost through warfare, fire, natural disasters or simply by neglect. In many instances little remains to inform future generations of past glories. It is vital therefore to develop a proven system of archiving sufficient data in order to recreate such buildings, if not materially then at least virtually.

Remote Access, it goes without saying that there are many more historic and cultural sites than one individual could hope to visit. The ability therefore to gain remote access to these sites is as important to the researcher as it is to the casual browser. The inverse of this problem is also addressed in that since many sites get relatively few visitors, remote access could provide tangible benefits to the curators, by raising their popularity in the virtual, if not the real world.

Interpretation, access to information, artefacts or buildings is just one aspect of the problem associated with learning from our heritage. To gain full advantage from these initiatives there must also be an attempt to explain their significance, to reunite disparate items with their context and interpret their cultural value. This is perhaps where the new media can show the most benefits via its flexible approach to amalgamating media and through this composite medium offer new contexts, interpretations and viewpoints.

Conservation, while the growing rise in tourist numbers may prove gratifying for the curators of popular sites, it is recognised that the level of throughput is unsustainable due to the 'erosion' of both natural and manmade materials. It is not uncommon for many sites to exclude visitors for much of the year purely in the interests of preservation. This is obviously in total contradiction to the main purpose of maintaining heritage sites and as such becomes a problem to which a solution is sought with increasing urgency.

How can new technology help?

The main goal of any VH application is in the development and preparation of computer based material, which can be used to enhance and possibly replace the experience of interacting with the real world.

New interactive technologies such as QuicktimeVR(tm) and VRML allow for an experiential approach to interpreting 'real' sites through the exploration of their 'virtual' representations. These emerging technologies are well suited to the role of VH for a number of reasons:

To overcome constraints:

• The design of VH applications should take full advantage of Interactive Media, especially the role of Virtual Reality (VR) in mitigating the constraints of a desk bound, screen based presentations.
• The high level of interactivity expected by the technologically literate audience is well catered for, as is the requirement for an intuitive experiential VR interface.
• The use of a VR interface simplifies many of the navigational problems encountered in mainstream interactive media. The traditional format is often structured as a series of hyper-linked pages, each containing interactive elements. By using a VR interface, the context is always apparent, thus reducing the structural depth of the presentation while always presenting interpretative media at the top level.

To add value:

• Visitors may be able to explore a site in the company of an expert "interpreter" as well as in an interactive mode. A selection of exploration routes in the company of the "guide" of their choice could allow visitors to gain an overview of the site from different perspectives.
• Features of special interest could be highlighted and explained. For example, these features could be approached on two levels, differentiating between what experts know to be true and offering a best guess to what was thought most probable.
• The interactive nature of any VH presentation should seek to encourage curiosity and help answer the questions that the visit may have provoked.

For Reconstruction:

• Many heritage sites have decayed over time and are in need of reconstruction. VH allows this aspect to be used to explore the methods of construction and materials used.
• Although the quasi-organic nature of many heritage sites are not suited to traditional 3D modelling CAD tools, which function best in a more rectilinear environment, the availability of a range of different media types ensures that there will be a choice of tools suited to different representations.
• As with many sites, recovered artefacts tend to have been redistributed to national museums. Virtual media allows the reinstatement of items into their original content, and by introducing interactive objects, visitors can not only view such artefacts, but virtually pick up and handle them.

Examples of VH Applications - Skara Brae

In 1996, ABACUS was approached by Historic Scotland to assess the suitability of new media in offering an alternative to the traditional presentation formats then in use. This test case focused on Skara Brae, northern Europe's most extensive and elaborate Neolithic Village. Revealed in 1850 as the result of a massive storm, the site exhibits most, if not all of the problems associated with heritage sites as discussed above. It is remote, situated near Stromness in the Orkney Islands, off the northernmost coast of mainland Scotland. Conservation is a strong issue, as visitors are already being restricted in terms of access to some areas of the site, and there is also a need for explanation and interpretation as much of the original building fabric has disappeared over time.

Figure 1: Skara Brae

Virtual Open Doors

Glasgow's Doors Open Day is an annual event allowing access to a selection of some of the cities most magnificent, colourful and unusual interiors, many of which are normally closed to the general public. This event is enormously popular and although a great success, the lack of time (one weekend) in which to visit the 93 available venues often results in a lost opportunity or rushed experience.

ABACUS produced a CD featuring a selection of the more interesting buildings, utilising photographic panoramas accessed through an index linking descriptive text to an image database. By providing virtual access to the highlights of these buildings most of the constraints described above are resolved. The narrative supplies context, access to geographically disparate buildings is next to instantaneous and the ability to compare and contrast amplifies the learning experience.

Figure 2: Virtual Open Doors

The Glasgow Directory

Among the many activities planned for Glasgow as part of the 1999 European City of Architecture and Design, was the development of the "Glasgow Directory", an Internet based Urban Information System (UIS). The project is aimed at both residents and tourists, in an attempt to promote the city's architectural wealth, commercial facilities, and sense of place.

Unlike conventional information systems, the VR model of the city encourages visitors to access information by exploring the context of the urban fabric. This infers that there are no pre-ordained routes or menu structures that must be followed. Information is accessed through intuitive exploration of the site, and the mode of access varies depending on both the user, and the choice of the topic of information itself. In this manner, the user becomes familiar with the application, in much the same way they becomes familiar with the city itself.

Figure 3: The Glasgow Directory

Conclusions

The current technical level of consumer hardware is entirely capable of supporting all but the most demanding of VH applications, as future generations become available performance standards will rise even higher.

The range of media types is already wide enough to provide a solution for the most diverse data representations. The spectrum of programming environments and tools now makes it easier than ever to realise applications which provide the vehicle for authoring virtual representations of VH subjects.

A growing number of heritage operators and software publishers are finding a receptive market for products that address the issues discussed above. At present there may be few, if any, VH applications which are capable of replacing a physical visit to a site, however, many can certainly enhance the experience.

As the internet moves towards an infrastructure of broader bandwidth, VH applications will reach a wider audience and provide a richer experience. The uptake of these technologies may well make a signal contribution to the understanding and preservation of our collective heritage.