The Digital Revolution and Modeling Time and Change in Historic Buildings and Cities: The Case of Visualizing Venice

Abstract

Digital technologies can transform the ways in which we can represent time and change in historical monuments as well as in cities. This chapter describes a collaborative, international, and multi-faceted initiative, Visualizing Venice, that was begun in 2010 as a joint venture between three universities: the department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, the department of architectural history at IUAV, Venice, and the department of architecture and engineering at the University of Padua. From the outset, our initiative has had three equally important components: representing growth and change in buildings and cities through three-dimensional modeling, mapping, and visualization, creating public-facing websites, installations and exhibitions, and training of students at all levels and recent post-docs with the capacities of new media for the exploration of fundamental questions that concern urban spaces and their monuments. As a consortium of individuals, institutions and disciplines that range from architectural design to new media and to urban and architectural history, Visualizing Venice explores the transformative potential of digital technologies for research on and analyses of cities, utilizing the rich archival documentation of the city of Venice as a point of departure for specific case studies. In particular, this chapter focuses on the capacities of digital technologies to model and represent process and time in the creation of historic spaces and the role of Visualizing Venice as a pioneer in collaborative work in these areas.