CHArt Computers and the History of Art CHArt 2000 Conference Paper Abstracts

VISUAL CULTURE AND THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Mike Pringle,
English Heritage

300,000 monuments. One VR model

In response to an ever developing Internet, and the novel technologies and approaches it introduces, the Heritage industry, like everyone else, is having to re-evaluate its own approach to data management and information output. The industry is now becoming more concerned with making data more widely available, and with the necessity to find practical, efficient and usable ways to do so. As an indirect consequence of new government initiatives (Modernising Government), English Heritage is making concerted efforts to make more of its own archival material available to much wider audiences than previously. The paper points out the importance of the end-user in this process, and identifies several differing groups to whom heritage data may be of value. It then outlines some of the current trends in various computer-based human computer interfaces (HCI) and demonstrates how these HCIs are developed in accordance with their intended user-base. The paper then introduces a novel, intuitive interface approach that is currently being explored by English Heritage with a view to making the accessing of heritage data more widely available and to a wider section of the community.

The project is assessing the possibilities of constructing a public access interface, on the World Wide Web, using familiar, real-world metaphors to represent sets of data. The metaphors, representing sets such as monument types or geographical areas, are placed in a virtual reality (VR), three-dimensional space where the user may explore them at will. This approach allows a user to 'fly' through; for example, a town composed of generic monument types of a specified time period. Once a particular model has been selected the choice may be changed, or refined by geographical and temporal constraints, and a list of corresponding monuments then requested. Furthermore, every choice made by the user is answered with prompts from the interface to assist him/her in the next level of the decision making process.

In essence the models are filtering mechanisms designed to illustrate certain sets or sub-sets of data. The depiction of these filters as easily recognisable models, with clear labelling, presents a contextual picture of the underlying data that imparts a high-level of information value at the interface. The user, even with little or no specialist knowledge, is able to navigate information in a quick, friendly, and productive manner.