Lebuse’s Letters/ Robert Linehan

Linehan introduces the viewer to the discovery of his grandmother’s letters on a rainy October afternoon one month after her death. He discovered a bundle of letters tied with a faded blue ribbon. These letters represented his grandmother’s efforts to locate her sister Lebuse during World War II. In the introduction you hear Linehan’s voice stating that when he began to examine the letters he discovered the tale of "Lebuse’s Letters."


Lebuse’s Letters" is structured as a three-act play. However, unlike a traditional play or film, the user can navigate among the scenes, searching along their own path at their own pace. The story centers on the letter as the sole form of communication or link among the family members. The metaphor of a letter serves three purposes according to Robert Linehan: It is "punctuation" between the different scenes; it is both an anchor and a link tying the story together; and it reveals elements of the story to the characters and the viewer. The story is about the lives of the artist’s grandmother and her two sisters, people who could be members of any European family torn apart by World War II whose letters were their sole form of communication. "Lebuse’s Letters" is a prime example of including rich episodes in terms of a story. Sounds, words, situations and objects coalesce into an emotional story that carries you away.


You "hear" the voices and "identify" with the characters. There are personalities that have a voice. The interface also serves the content, love letters and war memorabilia. The dialog is in essence the voices themselves, full of emotion beckoning the user to explore the story. Linehan has tapped into another way of seeing and designing things, provoking a moving or sensuous response.


Robert Linehan, who is a digital artist with a background in fine art, computers, theater, music and sound created Lebuse’s Letters as a thesis Project while earning his Masters of Fine Art in Computer Graphics at The School of Visual Arts in New York City.


The Hiroshima Project/Akke Wagenaar

My personal interest in the topic of nuclear devastation, combined with the photographs my father had taken over 50 years ago during post World War II in Japan and the Philippines, has been enlightening. While auditing Ken Feingold’s Telecommunication Class in the Fall of 1997, Ken brought in a guest lecturer from Amsterdam, dutch artist Akke Wagenaar. Ms.Wagenaar was introduced to us as a network-based installation artist. She explained her work to the class and allowed for questions at the end of the lecture. My fascination with the subject of Post-War Japan was sparked once again by the web project produced by Ms.Wagenaar. My own work was developing at the same time, which was based on mass murder on a global scale , the digital revolution and the information explosion.


Akke Wagenaar’sThe Hiroshima Project" juxtaposes cultural opposites crossing the boundaries between perpetrators and victims of the Hiroshima Bombing. By dividing her website into seven sections or navigation hot spots: Information, Citation, Guided Tour, Research, Databases and Artwork, she investigates the events (Los Alamos) that lead to the use of the atomic bomb and its long term effects on both parties. She has extensively researched her material and cross references a tremendous amount of data for her audience. Starting "The Hiroshima Project" may take some time, but once you’ve loaded a couple of pages, your browser will remember them and you’ll be able to navigate through the Hiroshima Project in a very fast way using the navigation hot spots as stated above.


"The Hiroshima Project" is a network-based information project. By taking the visitor along World Wide Web sites all over the world, the user has access to information about the atomic bomb leveled on Hiroshima 50 years ago and its commemoration in 1995 only two short years ago. The tour is structured in a non-linear, interactive and open-ended way which can be accessed like a catalog or a database. The Hiroshima Project also shows how the theme of the atomic bomb has been transformed in literature, film and the arts. The Hiroshima Project was inspired by the novel "Black Rain" by Masuji Ibuse. In Ibuse’s novel the reader confronts the actual story of a young man"The Hiroshima Project" is a network-based information project. By taking the visitor along World Wide Web sites all over the world, the user has access to information about the atomic bomb leveled on Hiroshima 50 years ago and its commemoration in 1995 only two short years ago. The tour is structured in a non-linear, interactive and open-ended way which can be accessed like a catalog or a database.


Akke Wagenaare’s project incorporates an endless trail through the World Wide Web.The visitor to the site can follow the order given by the author by clicking the Guided Tour hot spot. But just a warning!...If the user intends to use the guided tour, he or she will need a couple of days of free time. But the visitor can also follow his or her own order, using the navigation hot spots. Because each page has the same graphic layout, the viewer knows whether he or she is within the project or somewhere else on the web.


The Information section quotes the facts of the actual bombing of Hiroshima where the user can access information such as the fact that 92,000 people were killed in a flash of an instant. An estimated 150,000-200,000 died within months after the blast. As of today 400,000 are under medical and psychological treatment. "The Hiroshima Project" also has links to other websites that give information on what the long- term effects on genetic material. More than 1,788 known atomic bomb test explosions that followed are also discussed and documented. The Research and Databases sections give the user information based on articles culled from other sources. Not only English sources are quoted but Japanese, German, French and Dutch authors, which give the viewer enough information to form their own hypothesis and conclusion. How the atomic bomb has been dealt with in literature, film and the arts is the main theme of her site. Also included is her Artwork site which include Interactive installations that parallel the work done on her website. Accessing the Hiroshima Project is novel in thatit can be accessed in three ways: First, the World Wide Web site on the Internet can be accessed with standard browser software which can read HTML documents. Secondly, a 3-D Navigator, accessible on the Internet , enables navigation in a data landscape. The 3-D Navigator is written in VRML and can be read by browsers that can read VRML documents. Lastly, during exhibitions, the viewer can use a dedicated terminal for access which enables fast access.

© Copyright 1997 Denise Urban