Geoffrey Alan Rhodes Helps Create Virtual Reality App to Explore Chicago Histories

SAIC faculty member Geoffrey Alan Rhodes (Visual Communication Design) has helped the Chicago History Museum create a virtual reality app which helps unravel important Chicago histories. The app, called Chicago 00, shows the viewer historical photographs while at the location of the event. Rhodes, who is the lead on the technology side of the project, explained to the Chicago Tribune, "The really short pitch I'd always use is, if you think about photo archives and the way they've been shown, it's pretty much been coffee table books and documentary film for a century. And this is a new way to put them out there." The first installment of Chicago 00 takes place at the site of the Eastland Disaster of 1915 on the Chicago Riverwalk. Here the app user is prompted to stand in the same location as the photographer while viewing the images. The second installment of the project, featured in Chicago Tonight WTTW, focuses on the St. Valentines Day Massacre of 1929. The app can be downloaded for free at chicago00.org as well as the Apple App Store and Google Play.