The orientation towards the future seemed to have turned towards the past. Whereas one first tried to secure what was about to happen, one now experiences the feeling to take responsibility for that which has happened (Huyssen, 2003, p. 26). According to Andreas Huyssen (2003, p. 31), it is the modern transformation of temporality that has caused the current cling to memory. Pierre Nora (1989) deals with this question in his work on lieux de mémoire. Because memory has become more and more objectified and archived, the ‘real’ memory has turned into lieux de mémoire. Even though the ‘real’ memories disappear by the creation of lieux de mémoire, lieux de mémoire do compensate for the loss of stability and identity.

In this respect, the studies of Andreas Huyssen (2003) and Lübbe (in Huyssen, 2003) are more distinct as they explicitly focus on musealisation instead of lieux de mémoire in general. As they see it, museums can prevent the disappearance of the stability provided by the past. But how do museums create this continuity through time? Which human desire do museums actually fulfil? If we rely on Gumbrecht’s argument (2004), people want to extend their own lives outside the ‘life world’. They want to trace back their being to the time before they were even born and they want to be sure to have some existence in the world after their deaths. The museum fulfils this desire because people are now able to touch, smell and see the same objects as their ancestors did.

Whereas Gumbrecht (2004) speaks of people’s ‘fascination’ with the past, the return to the past is according to Huyssen (2003) not that much a fascination but more an ‘obsession’. As he argues, people are obsessed by the past because they are afraid to forget. The obsession with cultural amnesia is often experienced within groups because remembering is an important aspect for social cohesion (Halbwachs in Coser, 1992; Connerton, 1989). Maybe even more when collective memories are contested by others. Memory, after all, is an important source for identity and when memories are not acknowledged, one’s identity might be experienced in threat (Das, 2004; Jenkins, 2004). So, museums do not only enable the extension of one’s own life outside the ‘life world’, they also contribute to inner peace because they record, write down and provide the illusion of consistency.

The virtual museum is a remediation of the physical museum. The physical museum is a remediation of the books, documentaries and letters on exposition within it (cf. Bolter & Grusin, 1999). They are both ‘built’ to commemorate the victims of the Armenian genocide. And even though the physical and virtual museum are so much alike and inseparable, the messages they convey differ considerably. McLuhan’s (2001) statement clearly applies to our comparison too; to a large extent the ‘medium is the message’.

On this weblog you have had the opportunity to be an eyewitness of our discussions on the specific qualities of either the physical or virtual museum. We have been discussing ‘remembering’ as social sharing within both kinds of museums. The virtual museum might not seem  like a social environment, but in reality it can be. The accessibilityof both ‘spaces’ and the sensation of ‘being there’ are the aspects that we have addressed as the second quality. The virtual museum might be accessible for a wider audience, it misses the feeling of ‘being there’ completely. Or does it? Maybe even the most important quality we have been arguing about is whether the physical museum feels more authentic and ‘real’ than the virtual museum or whether it is more real. We found out that ‘reality’ isn’t that easy to define, and we could even ask ourselves the question whether it exists at all (cf. Grosz, 2001). The fourth and final quality we discussed is that of the extent to which a visitor can control his/her visit, and how far (s)he has the freedom to manipulate the environment. Whereas the virtual museum seems to be more ‘designed’ by the visitor him/herself than is the case in the physical museum, the question is whether this is true. Virtually, you are not even able to visit the toilet or to stroll down the hill.

All these different qualities make that  the memories mediated by the physical museum are mainly grounded in emotions; its memories are experienced as real, entangled with the everyday life of the user and historically – and thus inextricably - linked with its place. When people remember the Armenian genocide within the physical museum, they experience this mnemonic power. Conversely, the virtual museum isn’t able to count on such assumptions of exposing ‘the real’; they simply lack the quality of authenticity and historicity. That is probably why the virtual museum emphasizes different aspects of the remediation that the physical museum; mainly by showing ‘factual’ numbers (which bear the assumption of being ‘facts’) and impressive pictures (which bear the assumption that the camera does not lie). Because of their different qualities, the physical and virtual museum convey different kinds of memories, but all in order to reach the same; to be ‘politically’ convincing. And so it is that the medium shapes not only the message, but also that interested parties choose a specific medium in order to convey a particular message.

We interpret different media based on our preconceptions on what these media can show us. We assume that camera’s don’t lie. We assume that statistics are real. We trust the cold stone of a ‘physical’ place more easily than a ‘video-game’ representation of it on the internet. These preconceptions are not individual assumptions; they stem from our socio-cultural frameworks (Plate & Smelik, 2006). That is why investigating the medium as the message should not stop here. Try to reflect upon the question why you use the mediums you use to convey a certain message, and which implications this has. The emerging new media are just now beginning to reach puberty. They offer remediations of older media, and they enable new forms of communication. Think for example of writing a scientific paper in the form of a blog, and the changes in its form and message this brings about. Such changes urge us to rethink our messages, our ways of communicating, and ultimately, ourselves.

Succinctly put, remediation is media used anew in other media. Not mainly the content, but (part of) the form is reused in a new media form. In our case, the physical museum (which is in itself a remediation of other media) is remediated in the virtual museum. Additionally, Bolter & Grusin (1999) introduce two very useful concepts for our comparison of the virtual and physical museum/memorial: immediacy and hypermediacy. The first can be defined as a process in which the medium is ‘erased’ from the experience as much as possible, in order to achieve a more ‘real’ experience. The latter refers to an explicit use of mediation; the medium is expressly present in the users experience. Differently put, immediacy is looking through a medium, while hypermediacy is looking at a medium.

Whether our comparison of the virtual and physical Tsitsernakaberd space concerns immediacy or hypermediacy is a matter of how one looks at it for a number of reasons. First, there is the difference between the windowed and the full-screen option of the virtual museum, which is shown in the images below.

While the left-hand picture has a clearly present interface, the right-hand image fills the screen and can be said to have a higher degree of immersion. More importantly, however, whether we’re looking at (a desire for) immediacy or hypermediacy depends on what is remediated. If we think of the virtual museum as a way to remediate the memorial complex, and the complex alone, then one can say that the virtual museum is designed with immediacy in mind. However, if we consider that the physical museum itself is also a remediation of other media (after all, ‘the medium is the message’, see McLuhan, 2001), then looking at the physical museum through its virtual museum has important hypermediate elements. Obviously, immediacy and hypermediacy are not mutually exclusive, and their constituent elements reinforce each other.

As Bolter & Grusin (1999, p. 21) state: “Virtual reality is immersive, which means that it is a medium whose purpose is to disappear”. The virtual Armenian genocide museum/memorial Tsitsernakaberd wouldn’t be labeled a ‘virtual reality’ experience by most, because its graphics are relatively jagged and controlling it requires a mouse and a keyboard, but it is a mediation that aspires to at least some degree of immersion. It can be called a “desktop virtual reality” (Bolter & Grusin, 1999, p. 48) application, because it aims to inspire in the visitor “[…] a feeling of presence” (ibid.) – of psychological closeness. Differently put: the interface of the virtual museum is such that its goal is to be ‘transparent’ – to seem to disappear altogether.

See also our other post: Immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation.

People write their memories down, collect objects that remember them of past events and they make pictures of important moments in time. We do so because we are afraid to forget, afraid to lose our memories. But, as some scholars argue, it is exactly by remembering that explicitly, that we tend to forget (cf. Forty & Küchler, 1999; Huyssen, 2003; Maleuvre, 1999).

Perhaps the most important scholar in this respect is Pierre Nora (1989). According to him, people currently feel the need to embody their memories “because there is so little of it left” (Nora, 1989, p. 7). But because they do so, they lose the connection with the ‘real’ environments of memory; the milieux de mémoire are overruled by the lieux de mémoire. In Nora’s vision the living memories are all turning into dead history, which makes that real memories  will inevitably disappear. Museums therefore do not remember, but destroy memories instead, as his main point of departure is that real memories only exist as long as people are not aware to have them.

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