Wintec casts a virtual light on Hamilton's roading history

The projection of time, the way we traverse Hamilton city and a virtual drive are all part of a new exhibition by Wintec staff and students to open at Waikato Museum on Saturday 2 September until Sunday 15 October 2017.

Linking the City tells the colourful history of the ring road development in unexpected ways. At its centre, a 3D model built by Wintec School of Media Arts lecturer Luke McConnell shows the growth of the city from its beginnings in pre-human times, to recent developments detailing Hamilton’s ring road developments.

“It’s an exciting project and while the 3D model will be the centrepiece for Linking the City, it has been created as a longer term display piece as a gift of the city, to the city,” says McConnell.

“The model takes us on a journey from where we’ve come from as a city, to where we are now by projecting changes over time in a highly visual and engaging way.”

Wintec Media Arts students have also been involved in the exhibition which includes a visualisation of traffic flow on key Hamilton routes, a virtual drive around the route and a life-size representation of the strata of earth revealed by the road cuttings.

Wintec journalism tutor, Richard Walker says now the ring road is almost complete, it presented an opportunity involve students and staff in the creative, visual and writing process in developing an exhibition.

“Hamilton’s ring road, has been a good six decades in the making and it’s a good time to tell the story so far. Linking the City is more than a story about a road, it’s one with a colourful history that stretches back further than you might expect.

“Developing an exhibition involves the many skills our students are studying including the disciplines of journalism, communications, design and moving image. Projects like this give us scope to take the skills we teach and learn into real-world projects through partnerships, and put our work in front of the public.”

The ring road can be traced to a grand plan for a motorway from Auckland to Hamilton which was touted as far back as the 1950s. It will complete a circuit inside the city boundaries that will not only help traffic flow but also connects the present to the past. Milestones have included a front-page political stoush, the building of two bridges (Cobham and Pukete) and a highly successful social media campaign.

Find out more about the exhibition here.

Find out more about Wintec’s School of Media Arts here.

Image: Wintec tutor Luke McConnell and design student Etana Zaguri check out a relief model of Hamilton which will be part of the ring road exhibition.