Part of:

People:

Asymptote (Firm) (archive creator)

Title:

Three Dimensional Trading Floor

Date:

1990-2009

Level of archival description:
Series

Extent and medium:

approximately 42,400 digital files (62.4 GB)
17 folders containing textual material
1 VHS tape

Scope and content:
Series 1, Three Dimensional Trading Floor, 1990 - 2009, relates to Asymptote Architecture’s design of a virtualized NYSE Trading Floor that visualized real-time numerical and statistical data. This series includes textual, born-digital, and audiovisual components, as well as digital artefacts, and chiefly dates from 1997 to 2002.

The intent of the New York Stock Exchange Three Dimensional Trading Floor (3DTF) was to detect suspicious trading activity, track the impact of global news events on the market and potentially predict a crash before it happened. In order to achieve this technically, Asymptote worked with Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI) RealityEngine hardware which had been built specifically for these visualization-intensive applications. They also worked with Softimage and Alias software for modeling, rendering and animating, and VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) and Macromedia Flash in order to integrate real-time data into a navigable three-dimensional environment.

The main elements of the virtual environment include posts, containers, and back wall. The two container types, Index Container (IC) and Group Container (GC), allow for visualization and comparison of stock histories and behaviors. The posts display stock information, corresponding heat maps on floors, and alerts. The back wall integrates live news broadcasts.

Materials in this series are largely digital and primarily include still raster images and video demonstrating 3DTF functionality. There is also a small body of CAD material in Maya, Alias, Microstation, and Form-Z formats. Other digital materials include Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) files, HTML files, Silicon Graphics Images databases, research material, press kits, presentations, and handout files. The textual records are largely materials that were handed out at presentation meetings for each phase of the project. These typically illustrate major virtual components of 3DTF, like the heat maps and posts, and overlap significantly with the related digital files. There is also one VHS tape which compiles nearly twenty minutes of animated renderings.

Finally, this series includes 43 CDs. The CDs were processed and are included as part of the digital records; the CDs themselves were kept in instances where they may have artefactual value, especially if they were visually interesting or informationally important.

Reference number:

AP184.S1

Physical characteristics and technical requirements:

Across the collection there are a number of unidentified file types. This includes a number of unplayable .mov and .movie files which appear to be Apple QuickTime files; it is unclear how to access their content. A number of files with the file extension .pic (or similar) have an unknown format and can typically be opened with FCheck, an image viewer packaged with AutoCAD. FCheck can also open Silicon Graphics image files with some success. There are also a small number of corrupted files across the records which cannot be successfully opened. More information is available in the file-level description.

Arrangement:
This series was processed to a file-level. Files are grouped by format (i.e. textual, digital), and then roughly arranged in chronological order.

Conditions governing access:

Digital material can only be accessed on-site. Please contact Reference at ref@cca.qc.ca for more information. Access by appointment only.

General note:

Timestamps were corrupted on a number of files in this series. They were returned to an estimated correct date at the time of processing. See file-level description for more information.