An Interactive Biography of the Survivor or a Survivor’s Hologram? Novel Methods of Collecting Holocaust Oral Testimony and Their Determinants

Abstract

AbstractThis article aims to discuss the Dimensions in Testimony project, designed and launched by the USC Shoah Foundation to establish a novel approach to collecting oral testimony. The Foundation’s project was initially presented to a wide audience, especially by the U.S. press and researchers, as involving the creation of witness holograms. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Misdescribed by media outlets as based around holograms, this USC Shoah Foundation initiative looks, at least for the moment, to create two-dimensional images based on a long recording process and hours of in-depth interviews. Nevertheless, the project is bound to shape the future of Holocaust testimony and oral history itself. The key challenge for its authors remains to explain what the project actually is and to develop the concept of interactive biography, a name proposed by Stephen Smith, but not fleshed out enough in any academic articles in the author’s opinion. Consequently, this paper aims to discuss the USC Shoah Dimensions in Testimony project as a collection of interactive biographies, with particular emphasis on what an interactive biography is, as well as formulate a definition and propose alternative terms. For this purpose, the author proposes an interdisciplinary approach. To define interactive biography, this article will necessarily describe the mechanisms governing the project, the technique for displaying two-dimensional recordings of survivors, and how this aforementioned interactivity operates in the encounter of two-dimensional images of survivors and the recipients of their testimony. Finally, this paper will also look to answer attendant questions, including whether the project works as a post-memory tool for sharing survivor stories, and how are the survivors expressed in a digital tool.