Design and production in the capacity of an Interaction Designer, Art Director and Project Manager for L2M3 Communication Design, Stuttgart | Germany
Communication Arts
Winner Category »Info Design«
Press
HOW, George Shaw
»Lest we forget‹ presents an overwhelming amount of information in a powerful, emotional presentation. I found myself hypnotized by the opening animation and delivered into the abundance of information contained in the CD in a fittingly solemn mood.«
Interactive Annual 9 Communication Arts
Kristina Kremer
»Although much has been documented about this hideous period in human history, nothing before has been as elegant and personal. As a designer, I was stunned by the amount of content and the innateness of the architecture. The depth and quality of this piece put it, without question, at the top of my list.«
Content
Everyday life at concentration camps different fundamentally from what was and is regarded as everyday in the sense of routine.
Every action could (but did not necessarily have to) be used to terrorize the prisoners. Nothing could be planned, calculated or predicted by detainees. Powerlessness for the most part, they were confronted by the »absolute power« of the SS. This one sidedness of the distribution of power, something that occurs in no other social situation, is one of the basic characteristics of everyday life in such a camp. Everyday life in the camp became a constant fight for survival for the prisoners, a struggle for dignity and individuality, a battle against the disintegration and destruction of their own person. One feature of the camp structures defined by the SS was the classification of prisoners into different groups (political detainees from more than 30 different nations, Jews, Jehovah s Witnesses, homosexuals and others). Everyday life for prisoners differed dramatically depending on the group they belonged to. Biographies offer an excellent means of illustrating this dissimilarity in everyday life at a camp. They too are individual, yet are also dependent on objective circumstances.
The CD-ROM »The everyday life of prisoners at Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936 to 1945« is based on the experiences, actions and conduct of prisoners. It focuses on their subjective experience. Individual fates that differ as greatly as possible are presented in 20 biographies. Their presentation is arranged in six thematic areas. Parallel to this biographical material, users can directly enter six subjects, four of which [In the Company of Prisoners, Work, Time and Space, Violence, Dying and Death] relate to the time spent in the concentration camp, and two of which [The Path to Sachsenhausen, Living with the Memory] deal with the time before and after imprisonment.
The main elements of the presentation are the spoken narratives of survivors and of the descendants of those who were killed in the camp. Added to this are personal materials such as photos, drawings, documents and individual objects from the time at the camp that have been kept to this day by the survivors or families.
Design
The focus of the CD-ROM’s design are volumes that can be scrolled through dynamically. A clear and definite user interface is required to give the mass of researched materials (around 3000 items) a form and make it accessible to users.
The CD-ROM is divided into subject and personal levels (biographies) that penetrate each other. The biographies are classified by subject, with the subjects in turn being made up of individual aspects of the biographies. All the subject and personal volumes are framed by selection levels – the subject groups and individual biographies begin with short self-running introductions.
Normal users will find a large variety of opportunities to obtain more in-depth knowledge and to research deeper; the focus here is on audio keywords:
When the user moves over them, a pop-up appears containing functional audio documents with subtitles.
The CD-ROM is by all means intended as an archive that can be used as a means of researching as part of specific scientific work. Under the special function »Lexicon«, users have direct access to a glossary, a list of artists and a bibliography, as well as a list of references. By using the bookmark function, users can branch specifically to selected locations in the CD-ROM.
Lest we forget – Everyday life of prisoners at Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936–1945
CD-ROM Windows/ Mac
German/ English
ISBN 3-8032-1610-9
Awards & Exhibitions
Interactive Annual 9, 2003
Winner Category »Info Design«
SPD 38th competition, 2003
Gold Metal, Category »New Media«
digita 2003
Winner »Privates Lernen«
Award 2003
Winner of Outstanding Achievement Award
Award 2002
DDC Silver
Award 2002
Nominated for EMMA 2002
Contest 2002
Winner