Grant To Produce “Virtual” 1901 Pan Am Exposition Puts Buffalo At Fore Of National Millennium Effort

Release Date: August 6, 1999 This content is archived.

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Grant will allow UB to begin work on a collaborative educational documentary on Buffalo's 1901 Pan American Exposition.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo is one of only seven universities nationwide to receive a small but significant "Imagining America" grant through a new initiative co-sponsored by the White House Millennium Council and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (http://www.woodrow.org/press/public_scholarship.htm).

The $5,000 seed grant was awarded to UB -- along with WNED-TV and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society -- to begin work on a collaborative educational documentary involving a multifaceted "virtual-reality" version of Buffalo's 1901 Pan American Exposition (http://www.buffalo.edu/scripts/newnews/index.cgi?article=panamerica).

The documentary will be produced by area historians and media artists using historic artifacts and new video technologies. It is a unique undertaking, they say, and an important and innovative contribution to "Pan Am 2001," Buffalo's civic centennial celebration of the exposition.

Producers envision as a second project outcome the development of educational formats that will employ the material in ways that will be useful to schools.

These might include an interactive CD-ROM, distance-learning networks and other uses that Michael Frisch, UB professor of history and American studies, and co-investigator for the Buffalo project, says will "vastly expand the depth and reach of documentary materials and the issues explored through them."

Filmmakers say that when completed, the documentary will help viewers understand the Pan Am in different ways. It will offer most Buffalonians their first view of the exposition via virtual three-dimensional tours of its elaborate grounds and exhibits. It also will discuss the complex historical moment at which the exposition took place and compare it to the millennial moment that marks its centennial.

Producers will employ digitized film footage of the exposition originally shot by Thomas Edison and 3-D reconstructions of the exposition's layout architecture, exhibits, arbors, parkways, lakes and streams.

Viewers will get a look at the exposition's spectacular lighting as well. Fueled by Niagara Falls, this brilliantly executed lighting design was the first of its kind in the nation and one of the Pan Am's most amazing displays of new technology.

The grant has a significance that far exceeds its size, Frisch notes.

It means that UB and the other six university grant recipients comprise the leading edge of the multi-year Imagining America Initiative, a major national undertaking instituted to mark the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the next millennium, he says.

The foundation for the national initiative was laid at a White House meeting of higher-education leaders and federal officials in March, where a consortium of colleges and cultural institutions -- the Imagining America Consortium -- was founded.

Its goal is to create partnerships among humanities scholars, public agencies and community organizations in an effort to promote a better public understanding of local and global geographies, the process of cultural creation and the meaning of civil society.

Each entity involved in the project will bring its special expertise to the collaboration.

UB humanities scholars -- historians, computer scientists, media artists, sociologists and archivists -- will help shape the content by defining the meaning, content and impact of the original Pan Am Exposition and by assisting in the design and development of the video art involved.

In addition to Frisch, UB project participants include Roy Roussel, chair of the Department of Media Study, and Deborah Walters, professor of computer science and engineering, and director of the IDEAS (Integrated Digital Explorations in the Arts and Sciences) Center in the university's College of Arts and Sciences.

As the repository for major documentary collections on the Pan Am, the historical society -- the only permanent structure built for the original exposition -- holds in its archives such artifacts as tabletop models, Pan-Am guidebooks, photos, paintings, engravings, maps and souvenirs.

Under its director, William Seiner, the society will help select and digitize the most appropriate historical materials for visualization and link these to the central historic interpretations projected for the full-length documentary.

WNED will work with Azar and More, Inc., a local multimedia company specializing in computerized 3-D modeling, animation and data visualization capable of output to video.

Consultation will be provided by Roy Rosenzweig of George Mason University, the nation's leading authority on experimental and technological models for presenting history.

"All of us involved in the 2001 centennial celebration want to use Buffalo's rich heritage as a resource for imagining a new future for this region," says Frisch. "We want to bring together humanities scholarship, the arts, science, community and business in a model for civic and regional renewal. There are many people working toward that goal right now, and this project will reflect that energy and sense of purpose."

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