Client Tessellate Studio / USHMM
Role Creative Technology / Immersive Partners
Year 2022
Awards Core77 2023 Interaction Design Winner & Core77 2023 Emerging Technologies Notable
Since the founding of the museum 30 years ago, visitors to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have been captivated by the photographs of ordinary people in the Tower of Faces gallery.
Hundreds of portraits depict family life, celebrations and friendships in a small town. Almost all of the Jewish townspeople were murdered by Nazi German perpetrators and their local helpers in the span of a few days.
Challenged by the Museum in an open call for proposals, we wanted to find both a human and technical solution to tell the authentic story of the thriving life and culture of Eishishok, a Jewish community destroyed by Nazi German perpetrators and their local helpers during the Holocaust.
Humanos collaborated with Tessellate as their Creative Technology partner in a synergetic relationship bringing together humano’s immersive technology skillfulness and Tessellate’s (awarded) exhibit design expertise to create an Augmented Reality (AR) experience in the iconic Tower of Faces (TOF) gallery at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, as a celebration of life.
As visitors walk through the TOF, an AR experience brings a selection of 30 portraits to life through text, spoken narration, and imagery. An initial moment of color overlaid on the original black-and-white photography conveys the vibrant spirit of the community and the individuals who lost their lives. The experience is self-guided: visitors select AR-activated photos, hear the stories behind the photos, and even see relationships among people through animated connections visualized by AR, which lead visitors to nearby related portraits. An open-ended exploration approach allows visitors to meander through photographs and dive deeper into personal stories. Our goal is for people to leave the TOF with new questions and insights, grounded in an understanding of the impact of the events of the Holocaust on ordinary people and communities.
We explored novel interactions based on distinguishing between spatial navigation and resting, reading moments: users can navigate the space upholding it but as a selection is made and content fills the screen we also suggest tilting the device down, at a resting pose, allowing for better content reading and sharing.
The experience utilizes custom, site-specific AR software tightly mapping the real space with its digital twin and a back-end software platform that the Museum can administer, serving as a scalable system that evolves over time when new stories and features are added. Hardware includes an 11” tablet for visitor interaction and media presentation, a magnetic inductive charging mount, and a robust mounting solution including custom-designed handles. The exhibit launched publicly in May 2022, with over 70,000 visitors viewing 107,687 AR-activated photos to date.
Tower of Faces: An Augmented Reality experience has been awarded:
Core77 2023 Interaction Design Winner
Core77 2023 Emerging Technologies Notable
✳︎
This project was also possible thanks to the support of PTC’s Vuforia and its team.
Client Tessellate Studio / USHMM
Role Creative Technology / Immersive Partners
Year 2022
Awards Core77 2023 Interaction Design Winner & Core77 2023 Emerging Technologies Notable
Since the founding of the museum 30 years ago, visitors to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have been captivated by the photographs of ordinary people in the Tower of Faces gallery.
Hundreds of portraits depict family life, celebrations and friendships in a small town. Almost all of the Jewish townspeople were murdered by Nazi German perpetrators and their local helpers in the span of a few days.
Challenged by the Museum in an open call for proposals, we wanted to find both a human and technical solution to tell the authentic story of the thriving life and culture of Eishishok, a Jewish community destroyed by Nazi German perpetrators and their local helpers during the Holocaust.
Humanos collaborated with Tessellate as their Creative Technology partner in a synergetic relationship bringing together humano’s immersive technology skillfulness and Tessellate’s (awarded) exhibit design expertise to create an Augmented Reality (AR) experience in the iconic Tower of Faces (TOF) gallery at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, as a celebration of life.
As visitors walk through the TOF, an AR experience brings a selection of 30 portraits to life through text, spoken narration, and imagery. An initial moment of color overlaid on the original black-and-white photography conveys the vibrant spirit of the community and the individuals who lost their lives. The experience is self-guided: visitors select AR-activated photos, hear the stories behind the photos, and even see relationships among people through animated connections visualized by AR, which lead visitors to nearby related portraits. An open-ended exploration approach allows visitors to meander through photographs and dive deeper into personal stories. Our goal is for people to leave the TOF with new questions and insights, grounded in an understanding of the impact of the events of the Holocaust on ordinary people and communities.
We explored novel interactions based on distinguishing between spatial navigation and resting, reading moments: users can navigate the space upholding it but as a selection is made and content fills the screen we also suggest tilting the device down, at a resting pose, allowing for better content reading and sharing.
The experience utilizes custom, site-specific AR software tightly mapping the real space with its digital twin and a back-end software platform that the Museum can administer, serving as a scalable system that evolves over time when new stories and features are added. Hardware includes an 11” tablet for visitor interaction and media presentation, a magnetic inductive charging mount, and a robust mounting solution including custom-designed handles. The exhibit launched publicly in May 2022, with over 70,000 visitors viewing 107,687 AR-activated photos to date.
Tower of Faces: An Augmented Reality experience has been awarded:
Core77 2023 Interaction Design Winner
Core77 2023 Emerging Technologies Notable
✳︎
This project was also possible thanks to the support of PTC’s Vuforia and its team.