High time for time travel!
Between all the data on historical Amsterdam that is digitally available and the expertise of researchers, computer and information scientists, and heritage professionals, it must be possible to develop a time machine with which we can walk the streets of historical Amsterdam and meet her inhabitants.
The Amsterdam Time Machine (ATM) is a hub for linked historical data on Amsterdam. The web of information on people, places, relationships, events, and objects will unfold in time and space through geographical and 3D representations. In this Google Earth of the past, users can go back and forth between the city as a whole, neighborhoods, streets, houses, and even zoom in on the pictures that adorned the walls of for instance merchants and regents. The systematic linkage of datasets from heterogeneous sources allows users to ask new questions on, for instance, cultural events, everyday life, social relations, or the use of public space in the city of Amsterdam. ATM uses state-of-the-art computational methods and techniques, and it will be carefully annotated with regards to issues of uncertainty and fuzziness that are inherent to historical data.
ATM is being developed since March 2017 by an open-ended collective of historical researchers and information and data specialists from different universities, heritage institutions, and the creative industries. It is coordinated by the research program Creative Amsterdam: An E-Humanities Perspective (CREATE). Do you have questions, ideas, or suggestions? Please contact ATM project coordinators Julia Noordegraaf and Claartje Rasterhoff.
ATM is inspired by Venice Time Machine and many other linked data, geo and 3D programs, and a core member of the Time Machine FET Flagship consortium. This is a program that brings together research teams from all over Europe and the participation of about 200 institutions. The goal of this consortium is to develop new technologies for the scanning, analyzing, accessing, preserving and communicating of cultural heritage at a massive scale. Data extracted from this digital patrimony are the basis for the reconstruction of the historical evolution of European cities and the manifold relationships between these cultural nodes.
Visit the ATM website: amsterdamtimemachine.nl.