3D+Colonial+Philadelphia


 * [[image:dexter-house-frontal.jpg width="240" height="240" align="right" caption="James Dexter House, one of the locations in the 3D Colonial Philadelphia project"]]3D Colonial Philadelphia** is an ongoing project started by the Drexel University Digital Media Department of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design in collaboration with the Computer Science Department. It is intended to recreate colonial-era events and locations in 3D interactive environments. The main goal of the project is educational as an aid to the teaching of American history. Secondary goals of the project include the preservation and digital recreation of historical material, as well as distribution of the digitized material. The project was started in 2005 and is still in production.


 * ~ Table of Contents ||
 * # Purposes
 * 3D Interactive Educational Environments
 * Preservation / Recreation of Historical Material Digtially
 * Distribution of Digital Material
 * 1) Current Locations and Assets
 * Mill at Anselma
 * Whitall House
 * H.M.S. Augusta
 * Red Bank Battlefield / Fort Mercer
 * James Dexter House
 * 1) Resources ||

Purposes
The current scope and goals of the project are as follows:

3D Interactive Educational Environments
The generations of the 21st century are growing up accustomed to digital technology. Video games as a form of entertainment are commonplace. By engaging students in fun, interactive environments using technologies readily available, it is believed they will learn material faster and more effectively. Educational video games as a supplement to a teacher's lecture may be more efficient than in-class movies or the lecture by itself. A long-term goal of the project is to test these theories and to make available these 3D games and environments to schools.

Preservation / Recreation of Historical Material Digitally
Historical artifacts are in many cases fragile. Artifacts such as pots may be uncovered broken or break while transported and handled. Unique artifacts may only be displayed in one location at a time. Paintings and mosaics will age when exposed to light and time. Some artifacts are attached to locations, and the locations may be historical themselves. Digital recreation not only captures the artifact or location as it was when rediscovered, but allows for nondestructive manipulation of the object and its component parts.

Lev Manovich explains that the process of digitization has five specific properties. These properties are numerical representation, automation, variability, modularity, and transcoding. The concept of numerical representation is common knowledge among today's society. Computerized data is stored as a series of bits (0s or 1s). The system of analyzing the information is known as binary code. Automation is the process of allowing a computer to create new data from scratch using templates or simple-algorithms. Variability is the property of an object to exist in different, potentially infinite versions. Modularity is the concept that a whole digitized object may be composed of smaller independent parts. Finally, transcoding is the process of transfering data across program or spoken languages. A digital object may not have all of these properties, but it must contain at least one.

When applying these concepts to historical artifacts, we open new possibilities, as well as new debates. By giving variability to an Egyptian vase, we can create multiple digital copies of the vase to use in different display environments. It need not be pinned to a certain location. Physical 3D models can be made from digital 3D scans to accurately simulate the look of the artifact.

By applying the concept of modularity, we can approximate multiple potential variations if the original has be lost or is uncertain. For example, we know the Dexter House was originally a 18th century brick row home. By observing photographs and studies of surviving Old City 18th century brick homes with similar foot prints, we can approximate the general size and shape of the building. We may never be able to know the exact location or types of doors and windows, but we can easily create and swap various possibilities while still keeping the same object's frame. This is done more quickly and efficiently in digital space than with a physical model.

Modularity can also be applied to processes within the artifacts or locations. For example, the Mill at Anselma is a mill created in 1747 that operated with its original wooden gear train through the mid-20th century. Based on blueprints for its restoration, an animation was created detailing the function of the mill. Due to its confined size and safety precautions, visitors are unable to see many aspects of how the mill works. By breaking the mill into its component processes and cutting away the rest, the animation can highlight each process by itself to better explain what the visitor is seeing, as well as what they can't see. If the mill were ever inoperational, the animation may still persist.

By applying automation, we may be able to develop algorithms that can create accurate possibilites given existing data. For example, currently when an artifact such as a pot is found broken, an archaeologist may try to piece the pot back together by hand based on the pot's design and information gathered about the pots of the area and time period. If this knowledge were stored in a database, algorithms could be developed that take the scanned pieces of a pot and digitally produce a series of "historically accurate possibilites." Not only is this process non-destructive to the original pieces, but it allows for a wider range of possibilites in a shorter amount of time. Smarter algorithms can even be developed to "infer" shape and pattern of missing pieces.

Distribution of Digital Material
One of the important benefits of digitized materials is the ability to distribute them via memory storage devices and the web. This allows for greater speed of information transfer, as well as international collaboration. Information can be distributed locally to devices, such as cell phones and iPods. Independent tours are being created from videos of the docents for the Whitall House that can be downloaded as videos or audio clips to an iPod or other similar device.

Mill at Anselma
The Mill at Anselma was constructed in 1747 and served as a fully functioning mill well into the 20th century. Now the mill stands as one of the most well preserved and complete examples of custom grain mills of the 18th century. The Mill at Anselma was recently restored and currently runs purely as a demonstration for tourists to see the mill at work; however, because of the space much of the workings of the mill remain hidden. The mill was commissioned by the Mill at Anselma Preservation and Educational Trust to be digitally recreated and animated to illustrate the intricate gear work and machinery of the mill. The animation of the mill provides visitors with a view otherwise unreachable.

Whitall House
The Whitall House stands at Red Bank, New Jersey as a visitor center and museum for the Red Bank Battlefield National Park. The house was built in 1748 and served as the center of a 400 acre plantation. There the Whitall family lived peacefully until in 1777 when the American colonial forces seized the house and built an earthen fort, Fort Mercer, where their orchard was. The landscape around the Whitall House has changed drastically since it was built. When the house was constructed the Delaware River ran right up to the front of the house, today the shoreline has been extended. Through digital recreation people can now see how the house itself and the surrounding area changed over the years.

H.M.S. Augusta
The H.M.S. Augusta was a 64 gun battleship that sailed in the British Royal Navy. It was launched in 1763 and was sunk in October 1777 at the Battle of Red Bank. It was part of an attempt by the British to capture Philadelphia by sea. There are conflicting reports as to how the ship was destoryed, some sources say that the ship was run ashore attempting to avoid the chevaux de fris and was set on fire by the colonial forces. Others say that the British set it ablaze to keep it from falling into colonial hands. The digital model of the Augusta allows people to see what the now sunken ship once looked like, complete with armaments. The original model of the Augusta was made using blueprints of the Bologna, one of the Augusta's sister ships.

Red Bank Battlefield / Fort Mercer
In October 1777 during the American Revolutionary Way the British attempted to take the city of Philadelphia by sea. The American colonial forces had already made an earthen fort to the north of the Whitall House along the Delaware River, Fort Mercer, along with two other forts along the river, Fort Mifflin and Fort Billingsport. During the battle the troops at Fort Mercer, though outnumbered 3 to 1, were able to defend the fort and drive off the attacking forces, which suffered heavy casualites. This battle is in the process of being recreated using software called "Massive". Massive is a large scale crowd simulation software package and has been used in feature films like "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King".

James Dexter House
James Oronoco Dexter was a freed slave who moved to Philadelphia and founded a community of freed slaves living in Philadelphia. The site was recently excavated and found to have a rich number of artifacts. Over one million artifacts were excavated dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries. These artifacts provide a great deal of insight into the lifestyles of people in the colonial era. The house itself was not well documented and very little remains of actual house. A 3D model was constructed using photographs of similar houses and blueprints of houses that share the same "footprint" as the Dexter House. This site exemplifies the modularity aspect of digital media, as the exact look of the house is impossible to know with the current information several possibilities have been constructed and can be viewed simultaneously.

Resources
"Virtual History Lesson: 3-D Colonial Philadelphia." __Drexel Innovations__. 2009. Drexel University. 16 Mar. 2009 <[|http://www.drexel.edu/news/ innovations/virtual-history- lessons.aspx]>.

"The Mill at Anselma The History..." __The Mill at Anselma__. The Mill at Anselma Preservation and Educational Trust. 16 Mar. 2009 .

"Royal Naval History." __Royal Naval History__. Institute of Naval History. 16 Mar. 2009 .

Wardip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, eds. __The New Media Reader__. Massachusetts: The MIT P, 2003.