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Hypermedia and new Approaches to World Cultural Heritage
Kim H. Veltman
University of Toronto (CAN)
Hypermedia introduce a series of new possibilities for world cultural
heritage. In terms of cartography, one can change scales to go successively
from a world map to a local view. This material can be made accessible
on line. Animations can show how the boundaries of a given province or
cultural movement change with time, can trace the travels of a particular
artist or humanist, follow the influence of a specific motif, or style
such as the Romanesque or Gothic. The advent of high level Computer Aided
Design (CAD) packages, Quick Time VR, Virtual Reality Modelling Language
(VRML) and virtual reality means that one can reconstruct galleries, churches
and other cultural monuments and do virtual walkthroughs. High level virtual
reality permits one to create completely realistic simulations of historical
buildings and trace how these change over time. Hence one can, for example,
see a reconstruction of Saint Peter´s Basilica as it exists today
and then switch to see what the ancient, no longer existing basilica looked
like.
The same technology can be used to create virtual museums. If one consults
the Uffizi home page on the World Wide Web, one is able, already today,
to "walk" through the rooms electronically with the help of Quick
Time VR. Given the low bandwidth available to most users, the versions
currently visible are in low resolution. However, high resolution versions
already exist. The term "virtual museums" has multiple meanings.
It can refer also to a reconstruction of an earlier version of a great
gallery such as the Louvre. Or it can bring together in one virtual space
all the paintings of a single artist such as Botticelli - the originals
of which would normally never be found in a single space.
Some fear that the developement of new technologies with its quest for
standards inevitably leads to new kinds of cultural imperialism. This is
not necessarily the case. A recent conference in Sevilla sponsored by the
W3 consortium stressed emerging standards in both internationalization
(across all the borders) and multilingualism (in order to reflect the unique
expressions within borders). This seemingly elementary distinction offers
an important model for future developements. Some periods have emphasized
the universals of culture. The widespread use of computers means that local
villages can put the particulars of their culture on-line. The advent of
networked computers means that persons throughout the world can study,
compare and receive inspiration from this diversity.
Companies such as Autodesk have extended the notion of object-oriented
programming to the building blocks of the man-made world through what they
term industry foundation classes. Hence a door is now treated as a dynamic
object which contains all the information pertaining to doors in different
contexts. Hence if one chooses a door for a fifty storey skyscraper, the
door object will automatically acquire certain characteristics which are
very different from a door for a cottage of for a factory warehouse. This
concept can readily be applied to local cultures both at present and historically,
thus adding an enormous richnesse to our awareness of doors, such that
the variety of the particular becomes an incentive for global variation.
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