New Dimensions in Testimony

USC Shoah Foundation is currently fundraising for New Dimensions in Testimony, a new project being developed in concert with USC Institute for Creative Technologies and Conscience Display. The project is to capture three-dimensional interviews with a number of survivors so that in the future people will enable to engage with them conversationally.

Through the resulting interviews, these survivors will be able to share their experiences in vivid, lifelike terms with new generations, including those not yet born. The design firm Conscience Display is developing installations for students and other visitors to interact with photo-realistic, life-size versions of those interviewed. People will be able ask their own questions and engage in simulated, enlightening conversations with digital doppelgangers of the survivors, as if they were in the same room in real time.

Look, this is what happened to my husband. This is what happened to my children. This is what happened to my grandparents.

Regarding the project’s importance, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Associated Press: “The Holocaust is well documented, and we have confessions of the major war criminals. But there’s nothing like the human witness who can look you in the eye and say: ‘Look, this is what happened to my husband. This is what happened to my children. This is what happened to my grandparents.’”

Even after the last survivor has long since passed away, New Dimensions in Testimony will ensure their eyewitness accounts endure in 3D interactivity.

Read more about the project in the Summer 2012 issue of the Institute's digest, PastForward.