Virtual audience, round two: USHMM

The individual groups within the JHU DC seminar have definitely been learning from each other's presentations, and the virtual visit this morning, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, seems to have really benefited from the whole group's experiences and findings over the past week.

The USHMM group had some limitations to contend with since the museum does not allow cell phone use in the exhibitions. They decided to focus instead on the architecture of the space, since it would be easier to communicate outside the building and in the atrium areas. They also set up scheduled Tweets to be broadcast during the onsite group's one-hour tour through the museum. Reading the explanation of the project last night, I was somewhat dubious about whether they could convey the power of architecture, especially the architecture of that museum, through limited text and Twitter snapshots, and whether automatically-broadcast Tweets would make me feel like a participant in a real-time experience.

I was really impressed by what this group put together. They clearly had a lot of time to research and prepare, and they used that time well. The Tweets they sent out included images of the museum's exterior and interior, videos and photographs from the USHMM's online resources, quotes from Holocaust witnesses, and links to Soundcloud recordings they had made explaining the appearance and possible meanings of the museum's architecture. What really made this presentation powerful, aside from the always compelling topic, was the combination of media this group wove together. "Multimedia experience" is a term that often sounds clichéd and vague, but here it describes how this presentation was, in my opinion, successful and effective. Seeing images from the Holocaust, watching period recordings, reading the words of observers, and hearing the voices of my own contemporaries describing the museum - and all of this wrapped up in the visual and emotional structure provided by the building - created an experience in virtual space that uses some of the same techniques as the USHMM does onsite.

I do wonder, though, whether this virtual visit would be as convincing to me if I had never been to the USHMM. Much of what I heard and saw today was striking because it evoked and echoed my own memories of visiting that museum. Without that, I don't know whether this virtual experience would have felt as "real." However, I do think that multimedia, as today's group used it, goes a long way towards bridging the gap between onsite and online visitation.

(I also liked that today, Twitter felt more like a conduit than a site for the experience. Other online visits seemed to be taking place primarily within Twitter, which made me a little crazy. Today, partly because of the USHMM's restrictions, Twitter functioned more as a source serving me content and I didn't have to worry about frantically keeping up with multiple conversations.)