The Library

As the Y2K media frenzy and millennium celebrations reached a fever pitch in late 1999, the finishing touches were being put on the design of one of the most ambitious Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) projects on the Internet today. With the assistance of modelers, animators and programmers at the Bell Centre for Creative Communications (Centennial College, Toronto) and funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, Millennium Arts Fund, the first incarnation of this project, titled THE LIBRARY, was publicly launched on-line on 1 January 2000 [1].

The beautiful rotunda of the Canadian Library of Parliament was the inspiration for this 3D environment. While preserving the integrity of the basic layout and design (see Fig. 1), I endeavored to create a metaphorical interpretation of a building selected for its architectural and cultural significance. This presented challenging conceptual and technical obstacles. Numerous digital-library initiatives have largely neglected the humanities and "soft" sciences. However, 3D modeling represents an opportunity to transform books from linear stories into dynamic narrative experiences. Exploring new means of collecting, storing, retrieving and distributing information, as well as creative approaches to navigation, emerged as guiding themes as this project progressed.

Photographs secured with the cooperation of the librarians and archivists at Parliament Hill became the texture files. I added three stairways to the interior of the building model and provided additional points of access to the upper levels. In the center of THE LIBRARY I placed a world globe, the texture a constantly updated satellite image of the earth retrieved every five minutes from the NASA web site and wrapped around a rotating sphere. Inside the upper dome of THE LIBRARY, I placed an animated orrery (a solar-system simulation) illustrating the pathways of the planets. In all, I strategically placed six interactive 3D "objects" and "sculptures" throughout THE LIBRARY for the on-line viewer to discover while navigating throughout the space using a VRML-enabled browser.

Fig. 1.

Nancy Paterson, THE LIBRARY. (© Nancy Paterson) Details of the main floor of THE LIBRARY, including the world globe.

In mid-2000, I was provided with access to an ORAD Virtual Studio in order to further develop THE LIBRARY². The fully optimized 3D Library environment was ported to the CyberSet M (virtual set), enabling the seamless integration of people and computer-generated imagery [2]. A system of infrared transmitters makes it possible for viewers to see themselves in THE LIBRARY environment. On a wall-size screen opposite the blue screen of the CyberSet, viewers can watch themselves moving around and behind 3D objects such as the world globe.

In a previous mediawork titled STOCK MARKET SKIRT, I utilized Perl (via Linux) to extract a value from various Internet pages. This value controlled a stepper motor located under the dress, raising or lowering the skirt hemline as the tracked stock price rose or fell. In a manner conceptually similar to this process and to the retrieval of the NASA satellite image for the world globe, I am pursuing the development of THE LIBRARY³, utilizing a software upgrade for the ORAD system to retrieve data and multimedia elements from on-line resources (using Perl, Javascript and Java). In THE LIBRARY³, these additional elements will be incorporated into THE LIBRARY along with people, and this environment will in turn be sent out live over high-speed networks, interactive via a browser.