Iiv The City as a Model for Hypermedia Applications VISUALISATION OF HISTORIC URBAN DATA

Three-dimensional modelling tools can be extended and applied to fields other than manufacturing and design. Such tools can prove useful for the visualisation of historical information both for research and within a museum exhibition setting. This paper reports upon a set of software based upon a database of buildings, people, and lots from 18th century Montrhal which uses computer visualisation tools to permit users to wander through onscreen three-dimensional models of the city. Interacting with the software gives the viewer a sense of spatial relationships within the town at various points during that century, and the visual dimension makes it easy to see changes in the structures, relationships between different forms of land use, and the tracing of property ownership over time. A subset of the information in this database (3 distinct areas of the city) was outfitted with a user-friendly interface, and formed an integral part of the 1992/1993 gallery exhibit Opening the Gafes of 18fh-Cenfu y Monfrhl. In this paper we will first briefly outline the efforts of the Montrkal Research Group (MRG) in gathering the historical information that forms the core of this database. We will describe the complex software that MRG researchers use to visualise the data, then we will discuss the more user-friendly but less complex access methods that were available to the public in the exhibition. Finally, we will place all of this within a larger context by discussing the sorts of problems "cutting-edge" exhibitions face, the likely impact of software such as this, and future directions which may be followed.