Nadezhda Kuzmina, Seregey Papshev, Alexander Philippov, Saratov State University

Содержание :

Nowadays history, pushed by the scientific progress, develops much faster than before. From the middle of the XX century humanity faced the problem of loosing connections with its cultural past. The question whether everything done to preserve historical heritage on the national and international scope was justified, ceased to be alternative. Historical value of fine arts was never doubted, on the opposite, the value of historical architectural memorials remained under question until recently. Very few of them were acknowledged as invaluable historical relics. The majority, though, was ruthlessly destroyed or blasphemously redesigned, or, was condemned to slow death.
A number of organisations, ranging from such international organisations as UNESCO to regional Architectural Memorial Preservation Societies, united their efforts in proving the importance of preserving architectural heritage and developed scientific methods for its studying, restoration and practical use.
Unfortunately, popularity of architectural memorials leads to dangerous consequences concerning these very memorials. In many cases the memorials were lost and distorted in the process of restoration. In this case the question of what this or that memorial looked like is closed without any chances of ever answering it. Such production of pseudomemorials has nothing to do with original culture and is a futile waist of energy and money.
Existing legal regulations by themselves do not guarantee memorial preservation. The only real barriers to the “exception of the rule” practice are arguments of the public specialists. However these protests are often being ignored by local authorities because the area population remains inert. The reason for population inertia is the lack of information on historical and architectural heritage or the ineffective way of its introduction to people.
Absence of united cross-regional cultural and information space is also an actual problem. This space is necessary for uniting and consolidating people, as well as for forming their national awareness. INTERNET could play an important role in improving situation as the most democratic means of information access. Regional Society already present historical and architectural memorials on their sites and projects on the Internet. However on the whole these presentations are very uneven, unsystematic and they do not concentrate on the problem of memorial and architectural environment preservation.

Understanding of multi-dimensional description of architectural memorials requires certain knowledge in the areas of history, architectural construction specifics, architectural styles and their national uniqueness. If a person lacks this knowledge, “old stones” will not be able to communicate with him or her. This is especially true in case of memorials distorted by time and people, who changed their original look. This leads to the necessity of an easily accessible and thorough description of architectural memorials of international, as well as regional, scope.
Povolzkii Regional Centre of New Information Technologies of Saratov State University has developed a project called “Time Stream”. The purpose of the project is to preserve and spread around historical and cultural heritage of the region, to develop the public dialog and to raise the level of cultural and educational level of the population with the help of new information forms of presenting historical and cultural materials based on the examples of Saratov region, as well as Internet resources of Privolzskii Federal Region.
Multimedia disk and regionally centred site called “Time Stream” are going to be created while working on this project. They are dedicated to the problem of preservation of historical and architectural heritage of Saratov region. Work on the project also includes the distribution of CD-ROM “Saratov yesterday and today”. Several seminars are planned, such as digital exhibition and videoconference, dedicated to the preservation of historical and cultural heritage of Saratov and regions. Also lectures on the history of Saratov region based on multimedia technologies for school children were developed and tested.
The project is designed for wide number of people interested in regional history and culture, its results may be used in high and secondary educational establishments as a guidebook in studies of local area.
The main goal of the project is to present the selected objects in two states: an old state, when they first came to life, dating back about one hundred years, and modern state – 1999-2001 years. Quick visual object transformation from one state to another gives visual presentation of the changes that took place and can serve a good starting point in understanding of what had happened.
Povolzkii Regional Centre of New Information Technologies (PRCNIT) on its own initiative has started designing the web site already in 1999. The web site is dedicated to the architectural heritage of such outstanding Saratov architects as A.M. Salko, S.A. Kallistratov, V.A. Lukshin, P.M. Zibin, K.L. Mufke and others. Presently the work resulted in creation of a multimedia disc, displayed at the exhibition.
Several criterions were used while selecting the objects present on the disk: availability of the documented historical image, significance for Saratov and different historical fate, demonstrating person’s attitude towards God, towards himself or herself, towards other people, towards nature, towards state and towards time. Saratov rapidly developed at the end of 19 century and beginning of 20 century, so a significant part of the interesting memorials belongs to this time period.
Selected objects have different life cycles, which provides an opportunity to see correct and respectful attitude towards architectural heritage, as well as revolutionary changes applied to them, and even creation a mass product out of them, bearing a trace of stamp and vulgarity.
The projects site is located on the University web-server at http://saratov.sgu.ru and is available from any computer connected to the Internet.
The site is developed with the use of HTML and Java applets. Web browser (Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Internet Explorer) is used for presenting information, the source data is a collection of graphical JPEG files.
CD version is created with the help of Macromedia Director 8.5.
At present moment more than two hundred photographs with Saratov sights from the end of XIX —beginning of XX centuries and the corresponding amount of photographs of the present city, photographed from the same point and the same foreshortening, were used on this CD-ROM. Multimedia technologies, used in this project, provide an opportunity to visually represent the dynamics of city changes in the time period of one and a half centuries. Several memorials, which were completely lost, are reconstructed in three-dimensional graphics on this CD-ROM
This work became the starting point in developing the project “Time Stream”.
Currently several thousands of architectural and historical memorials are revealed in Saratov Region and registered by the government with the help of Saratov Regional Branch of All-Russian Historical and Cultural Memorials Preservation Society; among them XIX century estates in Saratov and Volsk, architectural memorials in Balakovo, Volsk, Pugachev, Engels and Kchvalinsk. Out of numerous of architectural German-culture memorials located in Marx, Engels, Rovnoe, Krasnoarmeisk and other towns and villages of the Volga River Region near Saratov, nowadays only about four hundred of German-culture memorials are registered.
Evidently, such number of objects can not be processed in one year. Therefore 100 objects are planned to be selected based on the following criterions: presence of documented historical image, cultural importance and different historical fate.
During work on the project, information about historical and architectural memorials is going to be accumulated from the materials of Saratov branch of All-Russian Historical and Cultural Memorials Preservation Society, archives of the local area museum and regional museums. Data about modern state of the objects, including photographs, is going to be collected during trips to the corresponding cities.
Then a consultant is going to choose historically authentic images of the architectural objects, which are going to be reconstructed.
While working on the project, the authors tried to create an analytical instrument with the help of informational technologies, which provides a way for on-line multi-criterion investigation of architectural regional heritage and for theme-oriented demonstrations, which will allow to attract public attention, and especially, government and businessmen attention, to various aspects of architectural memorial preservation.
Presence of such instrument provides an opportunity to evaluate many factors, for example, whether the return to the past is advisable, i.e. whether creation of copies, reincarnation of the lost architectural memorials is useful. Nowadays such tendency exists. Project results will help to evaluate the existing suppositions. Virtual reality, created while working on the project, will serve as a basis in solving such problems.
Presence of publicly accessible digital catalogue of the most important historically, architecturally or culturally valuable objects of Saratov Region and public events, which are planned as part of work on the project, will help to develop a public dialog and practice of co-ordinating with public interests while working on the development of the social-cultural regional environment.
Full coverage of the problem of architectural and cultural regional heritage preservation will help to solve the problem of accenting the importance of cultural and humanitarian valuables in political and economical area of Russia.
Later on the project can serve as a model for systematising and visualising the architectural and cultural area of Povolzkii Federal Region.