{"id":759,"date":"2020-11-03T12:06:58","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T12:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalholocaustmemory.wordpress.com\/?p=759"},"modified":"2021-03-11T16:13:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T16:13:28","slug":"finding-virtuality-in-virtual-holocaust-museums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/digitalholocaustmemory\/2020\/11\/03\/finding-virtuality-in-virtual-holocaust-museums\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Virtuality in Virtual Holocaust Museums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lockdown is here again, for many of us. As museums, cultural and heritage centres close their doors again, this week\u2019s blog reflects on what is a virtual museum, and offers various links to different experiences that you might want to \u2018visit\u2019 (in lieu of in-person trips) or share with students.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is \u2018virtual\u2019 about virtual museums? Virtuality <\/strong>is so frequently used interchangeably with digital, <\/strong>it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish whether a museum \u2013 or indeed any other online experience \u2013 is trying to present itself as a virtual experience <\/strong>or a specifically digital one, <\/strong>or indeed both!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attempts to virtually <\/strong>transport users into photographic, videographic, or photogrammetry representations of physical museum sites can often feel like remediations <\/strong>of in-person experiences of visiting museums as we are offered limited navigational paths <\/strong>through the exhibits. The main difference is that online we move representations towards us<\/strong> by clicking on arrows or highlighted content rather than moving our bodies closer to them<\/strong>, as we do in the physical space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst remediated <\/strong>experiences of physical exhibition spaces have become particularly popular during the pandemic, given we cannot see them in-person, there are many forms of virtual museums, <\/strong>some of which are digitally-born forms <\/strong>that have no non-computational copy, although they still rely on physical items form museum collections, and often present these in multimedia displays <\/strong>not unlike their exhibition hall counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this week\u2019s blog, I introduce a brief discussion of virtuality, <\/strong>before a close reading of four different examples of virtual Holocaust museums<\/strong>. Embed in each case study are a number of links to other examples. Please do share your experiences of \u2018visiting\u2019 them in the comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtuality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst in public discourse virtuality is used as a synonym for digital, in cultural theory and philosophy it has been discussed with more nuance, often through a Deleuzian lens<\/strong>. Bear with me here, for the theoretically dense bit of the blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many scholars have come to the idea of virtuality <\/strong>through Deleuze in relation to either memory <\/strong>or affect. <\/strong>I have written in detail, in a 2019 article<\/a> pulished in Memory Studies <\/em><\/strong>about the significance of the virtual to temporality<\/strong> and memory<\/strong>. For Deleuze, any moment splits into the actual <\/strong>and the virtual<\/strong> \u2013 the present and the moment transforming into pastness. When we try to relate to the past through memory, we can never retrieve any moment in its fullness, i.e. both its virtual and actual, rather we attempt to re-actualise <\/em><\/strong>it in the present. It takes on a different form to its original, as memory. Nevertheless, acknowledging the virtuality of moments can be a transparent way to engage with the past through memory, i.e. highlighting that we cannot simple \u2018follow in the footsteps\u2019 of our ancestors, or \u2018relive their experiences\u2019 (clich\u00e9 phrases I am sure we have all heard). Thus, I have argued that it is better to think of virtual Holocaust memory as a methodology for memory practice <\/strong>that can be adopted in digtial or non-digital projects, rather than simply another way of saying ‘digital Holocaust memory’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In relation to temporality, we can also understand the virtual through Bergson’s<\/a> reading of the Zeno Paradox<\/strong> in which, for Bergson, the arrow does not simply move from point to point, but as it moves through time and space it opens up to undefined potentialities. These potentialities<\/strong> may or may not materialise into actual experiences, regardless potentiality is a real if not tangible dimension of lived experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultural theorists like Brian Massumi<\/a> focus more on the relationship between affect and the virtual<\/strong> in Deleuzian thought. Massumi argues that <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Affects are virtual synesthetic perspectives <\/em>anchored in (and functionally limited by) the actually existing, particular things that embody them.\u2019<\/p>(p34)<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here, affects are not concrete, but abstract; however, they are not transcendent of lived experienced; they are essential to it. For Massumi, affect can escape the confinement of any particular body and can be captured and closed, for example as expressed by emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affect, temporality and memory<\/strong> are these muddied, fluid dimensions of experience<\/strong> that are familiar, but remain difficult if not impossible to fully translate into language or other systems of representation which attempt to fix both meaning and flow. They are not concrete or tangible, we cannot hold them in our hands, we can not see, hear or smell them as definable sense-data, they rely on continuous movement, passing through space and time, and in-betweenness<\/strong> \u2013 between bodies, things, and moments. We should then be sceptical of the idea of virtual representation \u2013 <\/strong>virtuality resists the closedness of representation. Yet, as Massumi eloquently argues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The virtual, as such, is inaccessible to the senses. This does not, however, preclude figuring it, in the sense of constructing images of it. The contrary, it requires a multiplication of images. The virtual that cannot be felt also cannot be felt, in its effects. When expressions of its effects are multiplied, the virtual fleetingly appears. Its fleeting is in the cracks between the surfaces around the images.<\/p>

Images of the virtual make the virtual appear not in their content or form, but in fleeting, in their sequencing or sampling. The appearance of the virtual is in the twists and folds of formed content, in the movement from one sample to another. It is in the ins and outs of imaging. (\u2026) No one kind of image, let alone any one image, can render the virtual\u2019. <\/p>(p133)<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One way we can draw attention to the virtual, Massumi claims, is through imagining \u2018infoldings and outfoldings, redoublings and reductions\u2019 and in between images (p133). I have also argued<\/a> that screen experiences related to Holocaust memory can foreground virtuality by drawing attention to in-betweenness through intermediality, exposing the spaces were flow and relationality can happen, where potentialities lie, where emergence<\/strong> is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps most striking in Massumi\u2019s book is his argument that \u2018imagination is the mode of thought most precisely suited to the differentiating vagueness of the virtual\u2019 (p134), which echoes Didi-Huberman\u2019s<\/a> claims about collective memory of the Holocaust<\/strong> \u2013 those of us who did not experience it can only access it through imagination. It is therefore vital that representations aimed at encouraging future generations to take on responsibility for memory<\/strong>, stimulate their imaginations<\/strong>. Thinking about memory through virtuality and affect suggests that imagination can be provoked by opening up spaces for potentiality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst Massumi reads affect in terms of the \u2018continuously variable impulse or momentum\u2019 of the analogue (p135), Mark B. Hansen<\/a>, Beatrice Fazi<\/a> and others argue that despite the discreteness and discontinuity<\/strong> of the computational<\/strong>, the digital can still be understood in terms of affect, and therefore in relation to the actual and the virtual. However, I do not have time to engage with this extensive debate here. Nevertheless, like these thinkers I was skeptical of this association of the analogue with virtuality. Reflecting on Virtual Holocaust Museums has, however, encouraged me to think again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Massumi argues vehemently against the idea that the digital possesses potentiality, understanding the limitations of coding<\/strong> as offering only a fixed number of programmed possibilities rather than the openness of potentiality <\/strong>(p137). Relating the digital to the virtual, he argues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018confuses the really apparitional with the artificial. It reduces it to a simulation<\/strong>\u2019 .<\/p>(p137)<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Massumi, I do believe we can find potentiality in digital experiences, but there is a strong case to be made for the fact that many understandings of digital virtuality<\/strong> really refer to simulations<\/strong> of physical environments or experiences, an as if we were there <\/strong><\/em>scenario, rather than drawing attention to the very virtuality immanent in lived-experience through affect, temporality and memory.  Massumi goes onto argue that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018digital technologies have a connection to the potential and the virtual only through the analog\u2019 <\/em>. <\/p>(p138)<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In my next blog and forthcoming publication, I explore how the paradigm of Mixed Reality<\/strong> \u2013 which despite his positioning against Massumi as an advocate for digital affect, Hansen argues<\/a> is the essence of all reality – might be more productive for thinking about digital Holocaust memory projects than aiming to create \u2018immersion\u2019<\/strong>. There is certainly a provocation of emergence, potentiality and in-betweenness<\/strong> that appears when memory projects fuse together physical and digital<\/strong> elements. Indeed, Massumi sees potential promise in the idea of interfaces being embedded into everyday environments (p142), though he falls into the trap of considering this immersion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although, as Massumi highlights, our encounters with the digital generally enfold the analogue, from scans of photographs to uploaded video or sound, to reading language on screens (p139-42) \u2013 these are often analogue experiences codified and processed digitally. Where they are more specific to the digital, as in the case of surfing the web, he argues the potentiality is not a result of the \u2018coding itself, but of its detour into the analog. The processing may be digital \u2013 but the analog is the process<\/em>\u2019 (p142). When we surf, we mentally and physically move ourselves through different online spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brief reflection on virtuality <\/strong>raises some questions in the context of virtual Holocaust museums:<\/p>\n\n\n\n