reVilna

reVilna is a digital mapping project about the Vilna Ghetto in Nazi Germany, focusing on eight narratives: Formation of Ghetto, Aktionen, Judennat, Health & Education, Life in the Ghetto, Art & Culture, Resistance & the FPO, and End of the Ghetto. Each of these stories first inform the user with historical context and an image gallery before revealing the map (created on Leaflet).

Formation of Ghetto, Aktionen, Resistance & the FPO, and End of the Ghetto are structured by a timeline. The points on the map are linked to a specific dates in history with corresponding images and text. The present point is most red in color while upcoming points are pink and light pink. The user can request more guidance through the story by clicking the play button, however, this functionality moves through the points very quickly making it difficult to follow (it’s easier just to manually click through the timeline).

In the non-temporal stories, such as “Health and Education,” the points are color coded by type of place, people, or activity (i.e. Soup Kitchen, Sport, Ghetto Police ). Certain locations can more objectively be categorized as “Hospitals.” Other categories such as “Life” are more broad and can include varied locations. These groupings create certain assumptions about the types of locations they include and impose different meanings onto the locations.

The purpose of the green line superimposed onto the map is unclear. It seems as though the map designer assumes that the user would understand it’s outlining the Ghetto areas (even though it’s never explicitly stated).

As Turnbull says in Exhibit 3, “Maps have been thought to be objective in that they are independent of the view of a particular observer.” reVilna is a subjective representation of Vilna Ghetto that constructs an educational narrative about the landscape’s history. At the same time, the aerial perspective imposes a territorial point of view. Users see the map through the lens of the Nazis who controlled the Ghetto. The POV is from the vantage point of those who had the most authority, exemplifying what Bruno Latour demonstrates in his theories about power hierarchies embedded in maps.

The exhibits in Turnbull’s Maps are Territories discusses the subjective nature of maps, even when most continue to consider maps as objective representations of the real world. Maps are inherently flawed by the very act of flatten a spherical shape onto a two-dimensional plane. Iconic representations, symbolic representations, color palettes, titles, labels, orientation, scale etc. are all variables that construct subjective views. Even the base map for Google Maps, the Mercator Projection, is inaccurate, yet we’ve grown so accustomed to it that we take it as a scientific representation of the world.

For an alternative version of this map, I would restructure the POV to be through the eyes of the Jews in the Ghetto. The map would use virtual reality (Oculus or HTC Vive) or renderings similar to Street View on Google Maps to adopt a humanistic perspective. In this way, the user could be more immersed into the Ghetto, rather than being removed with an aerial perspective. Furthermore, instead of using arbitrary colors and shapes for the markers on the map, I would use icons to symbolize the locations. Also, more advanced versions of the map could reach a wider audience by being translated into other languages and text-to-audio abilities for the blind or illiterate.