http://www.fullscreen360.com/times-square
Primary Source: a 360 degree view of Times Square
In Classics 20, Discovering Romans (taught by Professor Johannson), we often use the Roman Stimulation Model that is mentioned in Favro’s “Meaning in Motion” article. It is an interesting supplement to the lecture. Some of it’s best uses in class were to show the route of the Roman Funeral March and the typical Victory Parade that generals took upon returning to Rome after war. It has also been used to model the course of battles that took place within the city. However, I sometimes wonder weather Prof Johannson is over eager to use the tool- it doesn’t really mean anything when used in conjecture with one of Castillo’s poems, or to show where Roman theater productions “may have” taken place.
While reading the article, I wondered what other classes I have taken may have benefitted from such a visualization tool. I think Dinosaurs and their Relatives (EPS SCI 17) would have been a good one. The class focused on the rise and fall of dinosaurs, theories of evolution, and changing lands during historic times. Rather than a stimulation where you can explore the lands, however, a tool showing the change in one area over the decades would have been good. For example, showing the land before, during, and after a flash flood or fire would have contributed to our understanding of migration and the formation of sedentary rock. This is also a problem we often run into in Classics 20: the time frame for the stimulation is stagnant, and sometimes does not align with our purposes. The professor may show us where a building was, but the stimulation models a time after that building was destroyed. The tool, although interesting and usually effective, would benefit from showing a greater range of time periods.
This also reminds me of a famous New York attraction- a 3D tour of Times Square. You sit in seats and are surrounded on all sides by a view of the landmark. The seats rock in place back and forth, side to side, as the visualization takes you through the city. There is also fake wind that blows at you throughout the tour. It is like being on a roller coaster tour of NYC! The stimulation works so well that some people actually get motion sick on the “ride”. Although this would be a strange thing to implement in a class at UCLA, it is an example of a whole-body experience through a stimulation tool, which uses much of the same technology as the UCLA CVR.