Multimedia website offers remote tour of Holocaust museum
by Jason Holland | 01 May 2014
Six survivor stories are told as interactive graphic novels / Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum
A US company has unveiled an interactive multimedia website which provides a virtual tour of the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum from anywhere in the world.
An interactive map experience, called Walk Among Memories, combines Google Street View with archival photographs and multimedia survivor stories to allow people to tour and learn about the Riga Ghetto – a Nazi-designated area of Latvia where Jewish people were forced to live during the Second World War.
Mike Fetrow, executive creative director for Olson, the Minneapolis-based agency which created the site, told Attractions Management that the map experience is unlike anything the company has seen elsewhere.
“Whether you are in Minneapolis or London or anyplace else in the world, you can literally walk down a street in the Riga Ghetto, see what it looks like today – which is not very different from during the 1930s or 1940s – and learn about the evolution of the Holocaust in Latvia, which is the mission of both the site and the museum,” he said.
Although he described the project as “unique,” Fetrow said the technology could certainly be applied in a wide number of ways. “Any museum dedicated to a historic place that still exists in any recognisable form could potentially leverage this sort of approach to do something impactful," he said. "It’s a really powerful way to tell stories that are rooted in a particular place.”
The website – which also includes six survivor stories told as interactive graphic novels – aims to mirror the physical museum’s mission to offer guests a window into the everyday reality of the Riga Ghetto by providing a graphic guide to the evolution of the Holocaust in Latvia in a digital environment.
“One of the museum’s challenges is that Riga in particular, and Latvia in general, is not as well known as other areas impacted by the Holocaust, even though 70,000 people died there. The aim was to create something that would both honour those who perished and the survivors, while elevating the museum’s profile in the process,” said Fetrow.
The site was inspired by a visit from Olson’s senior interactive digital artist Cory McLeod – who grew up in an ethnic Latvian family and has lived in the country – to the museum last summer.
To visit the website click here.
A US company has unveiled an interactive multimedia website which provides a virtual tour of the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum from anywhere in the world. An interactive map experience, called Walk Among Memories, combines Google Street View with archival photographs and multimedia survivor stories to allow people to tour and learn about the Riga Ghetto – a Nazi-designated area of Latvia where Jewish people were forced to live
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