Building a Web Experience: Our Ideas

Because the CAVE is a site-based virtual experience, the MIDAC exhibit will also include a web-based component which allows visitors who cannot attend the CAVE viewings to access the exhibit. Because of the accessibility restrictions for the CAVE component of the exhibit, it must be assumed that the website will be the most heavily accessed exhibit feature. It should not, however, seek to recreate the CAVE experience, but rather supplement it through more detailed textual and visual materials. Supposing the CAVE experience aims to give visitors a sense of the larger workings of MIDAC, the website should host small 3D pieces of the computer which demonstrate its operation on a more detailed level. Individual elements of its mechanics such as vacuum tubes and delay lines, or principles involved in its design, such as switching, or acoustic storage could be featured, including animations that may be too complicated to model in the CAVE.

Because of the complexity of the principles and components involved in MIDAC, every effort should be made to make the web-based material as dynamic and interactive as possible. Animations should abound, objects should be 360 degree manipulateable, and text should always be accompanied by graphic examples. All information on the website should also make an effort to relate to the archival material on hand. These publications should be particularly featured, and links should direct visitors to their locations in the Bentley, and in DeepBlue where applicable.