Chicago 00: Ferris Wheel

FAIN: MT-263824-19

Chicago History Museum (Chicago, IL 60614-6038)
John Russick (Project Director: June 2018 to present)

Development of a project prototype using augmented reality and virtual reality to explore the history of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The Chicago History Museum proposes to create a digital storytelling prototype that transports audiences to the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, where fair-goers are captivated by the technological marvel of the first Ferris wheel. Using virtual and/or augmented reality to share historical images alongside contemporary scenes and extant sites, the project will relay iconic urban history in a bold new way, weaving humanities topics that explore the complexity and relevance of a defining moment in the life of a great American city. Chicago 00: Ferris Wheel will be a user-driven, broadly accessible exploration of history. The prototype process will strongly emphasize evaluation of platforms and themes to help us deliver meaningful immersive reality experiences to new audiences. By integrating evaluative moments throughout, we will identify pathways for design that maximize impact and reach. These pathways and measurement tools will be iterative and shared with peer organizations.

Associated Products

Chicago 00 Ferris Wheel Final Evaluation Report and VR/AR Experience Evaluation Rubric (Report)
Title: Chicago 00 Ferris Wheel Final Evaluation Report and VR/AR Experience Evaluation Rubric
Author: Kate Haley Goldman
Author: Leslie Henry Kadish
Abstract: Museums have lacked the tools and scales, even a vocabulary, for measuring immersion, presence, and empathy and how and whether those elements contribute to learning outcomes. HG&Co and the Chicago00 team examined how these digital projects advance the Chicago History Museum’s goals, and how to measure both cognitive and affective outcomes of these intense emerging experiences in order to develop more substantive and memorable encounters with history through this experimental digital platform. The team interviewed and surveyed hundreds of participants, and developed a novel Experience Evaluation Rubric (EER) to examine, in depth, how individuals experience immersion and presence within AR and VR environments. VR and AR is at heart a spatial technology, the viewer feels like they are in physical spaces, or in the case of AR, that computer generated content is in real space with them.
Date: 04/13/2020
Primary URL: https://chicago00.org/Chicago00_OurProcess_October_2020.pdf
Primary URL Description: Evaluative report for the Chicago History Museum's VR experience of the first Ferris Wheel at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Includes an Experience Evaluation Rubric, a tool that can be used by any museum engaged in VR.
Access Model: open access

Chicago 00 World's Columbian Exposition (Ferris Wheel) web portal (Web Resource)
Title: Chicago 00 World's Columbian Exposition (Ferris Wheel) web portal
Author: John Russick
Author: Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Abstract: Chicago00: 1893 World's Columbian Exposition reveals the history of Midway Plaisance and Jackson Park on the south side of Chicago. Over a century ago, this was the site of one of the largest and most important world's fairs in history. Millions of visitors came to Chicago to visit the temporary city of hundres of exhibitions. Jackson Park housed the White City; the Midway Plaisance was the mile long western entrance to the fair with a mix of entertainments, crass exoticism, and performers from around the world. Offered here are 16 virtual reality panoramas of the sites, assembling historical photography from the archives of the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Public Library, the Ryerson and Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Goodyear Archival Collection at the Brooklyn Museum Archives. The virtual reality video experience, linked in the menu, provides an animated ride on the central feature of the Midway: the 250 foot Ferris Wheel.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://1893.chicago00.org/
Primary URL Description: A new web portal through which audiences can interact with a map of the VR imagery, see the augmented locations through Google Street View, read an interpretive essay on the project’s humanities themes, and browse an extensive captioned gallery of historical imagery.

Chicago 00: World's Columbian Exposition Pre-Release (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Chicago 00: World's Columbian Exposition Pre-Release
Writer: Julius Jones
Writer: Kayla McCarthy
Writer: Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Director: Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Producer: Chicago History Museum
Abstract: VR film that focuses on the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition's Midway, where millions of immigrants came together to gawk at a pageant of luxury, entertainment and exoticism. The world's first Ferris Wheel rose 250 feet above this scene. The full VR experience engages headsets and earphones, so participants hear narration, sound effects, and music, while watching a 360-degree world of historic images overlaid on contemporary photographs and video footage of Jackson Park and Midway Plaisance.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2SD9ayCMTc
Primary URL Description: Virtual reality film of the Midway Plaisance and Ferris Wheel at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
Secondary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhKLQMBbQOc&feature=youtu.be
Secondary URL Description: A VR ride on the world's first Ferris Wheel at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (best viewed with VR headset or goggles)
Access Model: open access
Format: Video
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

Grandeur, Progress, and Innovation for Some: The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (Article)
Title: Grandeur, Progress, and Innovation for Some: The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
Author: Julius L. Jones
Abstract: With its opening on May 1, 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition was a bold and definitive statement that America and its then-most dynamic city had arrived on the global stage not merely as a bit-part player, but as a cultural, political, and economic powerhouse. The director of works for the exposition, Daniel H. Burnham, wanted a symbol for the fair that would put Paris’s Eiffel Tower to shame. To achieve this, he selected a simple but radical design for a revolving observation wheel using steel tension construction created by civil engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Perhaps the clearest embodiment of Chicago’s—and by extension America’s—technical superiority at the fair, the Ferris Wheel dominated the Midway Plaisance and became a beacon for visitors traveling to the fairgrounds.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://1893.chicago00.org/assets/1893_legacy_of_the_fair.pdf
Primary URL Description: Essay on the humanities themes present in the VR experience Chicago 00: World's Columbian Exposition (Ferris Wheel)
Access Model: open access
Format: Other
Publisher: Chicago History Museum

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