The notion that the complex, swarming life-signs of the stock market could be rendered into a visual landscape has been the stuff of science fiction speculation for years, from the invention of "cyberspace" in William Gibson's Neuromancer to David Arnovsky's paranoid thriller, Pi.
Now, Silicon Alley architecture firm Asymptote has been chosen by the Securities Industry Automation Corporation to turn dream into reality for the New York Stock Exchange. In January, a revolutionary data-display hub designed by Asymptote will begin operation on the floor of the exchange.
Christened "the Ramp," the hub will use state-of-the-art technology -- VRML, high-resolution plasma monitors, and Silicon Graphics Onyx rendering engines -- and will allow brokers to navigate through continuously updated trading information in real time and in three dimensions. Another possible use of this technology could be the simultaneous tracking of activity on several stock exchanges.
The Ramp's lively, innovative displays will also become the telegenic media backdrop for important news announcements -- such as significant IPOs -- from the floor of the exchange.
Traders and brokers will be able to interact with the data in a number of ways. An array of six-foot diagonal PixelVision plasma screens will display a real-time image of trading activity called "3DTF," for three-dimensional trading floor. Users will be able to zoom in on clusters of data and navigate within the virtual landscape. Other screens -- Asymptote calls it the systemscape -- will track server activity, allowing brokers and NYSE computer operators to tweak remote operations without leaving the trading floor.
Financial news broadcasts will be funneled into the visual mix via CNN-FN and CNBC screens inset into the Ramp's deep-blue background. Asymptote architect Hani Rashid and his team are also working with manufacturers to develop innovative tools for interacting with the mass of data, such as VRML "binoculars" to deliver 3D images.
The goal, says Rashid, is "to put you inside ... a dynamic, fluctuating world of data."
Wall Street has always been on the cutting edge of information technology -- from the stock ticker of 1867, to the installation of telephones on the trading floor in 1878, to the wireless handsets and voice-recognition software of today.
The planned hub is "a very exciting project," says the SIAC data-visualization specialist who selected Asymptote to design the hub. He declined to go into further detail about the project, which is being kept under wraps.
For Asymptote, which is also slated to design an ambitious "Virtual Museum" for the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the NYSE project is another opportunity to gain street credibility -- Wall Street style -- as a firm that can visualize and execute elegant, effective structures in real space as well as virtual space.
The crossroads between the two worlds is just where Rashid, who founded Asymptote with Lise Anne Couture in 1987, wants to be.
"I walk down the hall, and on one side, they're talking about structural integrity, while on the other side, they're talking about pixel real estate and wireframe efficiency," Rashid explains. "It's a very interesting moment for us as architects."
Asymptote made its initial splash as a high-concept architectural house by winning an international competition to design the Los Angeles West Coast Gateway project in 1989. The aim of the Gateway was to give the Left Coast a monument equal to the Statue of Liberty, expressive of the California connection to the Pacific Rim.
"We went at it with absolute fervor," Rashid recalls. Asymptote's radical vision for the Gateway, named the Steel Cloud, was a structure a third of a mile long designed to occupy the airspace above the Hollywood Freeway.
The ambitious US$90 million design -- which included scuba divers swimming in glass tanks above the roadway -- got bogged down in local politics after Mayor Tom Bradley, who had promoted the Gateway idea, left office. Rashid says that a group of Japanese investors approached Asymptote about the possibility of building the Steel Cloud near Tokyo Bay, but he is hopeful that the project will be built in the context for which it was originally envisioned.
"Great cathedrals in the past ... took several generations to build," he says.
Other Asymptote projects include the Universe Theater in Aarhus, Denmark -- a center for high-tech multimedia theater performances -- and a video installation at the Paper Art Bienalle in Düren, Germany, in 1996.
