Eye as Witness
An excitingly creative use of technology to reconsider the past, its purpose is chillingly contemporary.
The Eye as a Witness virtual reality exhibition created by The National Holocaust Centre & Museum and the University of Nottingham with additional funding from the Arts Council England, was launched at a London Synagogue in January 2020, marking the 75th anniversary since the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen death camps were liberated.
Visitors to the unusual Mixed Reality Experience will enter a virtual Holocaust exhibition filled with Nazi propaganda photos of Holocaust victims. Using state-of-the-art virtual reality computer simulation technology and techniques they will be able to ‘walk into’ a photograph to see the propaganda photographer in the act of taking the picture. They can explore the space to consider the context of the image and discover what was kept out of frame. The VR allows people to view snapshots of this traumatic period in modern history in a private, personal and visceral way.
The exhibition invites critical thinking, asking for an understanding of the visual cunning of the Nazis and how propaganda helped permeate and arguably legitimise anti-Jewish hate – and to think critically about the same propaganda techniques being used on social media today.
The Smart Products Beacon is supporting the tour which visits Lakeside Arts continuing onto a number of prominent sites, including the Imperial War Museum North and the Jewish Museum in London. International venues will include the Documentation Centre in Munich and Dachau Concentration Camp. More details can be found on the project website.
Read what Holocaust survivor Martin Stern thought of the exhibition.
The exhibition has received a lot of publicity and you can read the following: Further information can also be found on the following website:
"I was very impressed, it's amazingly real"