Visualising the Openings and Closures of Cinema Venues in Melbourne

This visualisation has been developed to be able to make full use of the complex data associated with historical cinema venues; data which is temporally, spatially, and tematically rich. The graphic approach enables multiple variables about a cinema venue, such as seating capacity, to be viewed in the one image along with spatial and temporal components which show changes to variables over time. This figure shows the visualisation approach applied to Melbourne's cinema venue data, depicting the spatial and temporal characteristics of cinema venues opening or closing between 1946 and 1986. The cinema variables that are investigated are the primary purpose of the venue (such as hall or theatre), the size of the cinema company, and seating capacity. Each cinema venue is now a line, one that has length/duration, and therefore history.