Modern media technologies, including 360° cameras, VR headsets, and haptic devices, have greatly expanded opportunities for individuals around the globe to digitally explore sites of destruction. Museums and galleries use these technologies to give visitors the chance to see, hear, and feel historic landscapes of oppression. Artists and activists exploit these same tools to inform political leaders about contemporary cases of atrocity. Nevertheless, the specific affordances and special challenges posed by digital simulations of sites of destruction remain poorly understood. This workshop brings together leading scholars from Switzerland, the UK, and the US for discussion of these issues.

Speakers
Victoria Walden (University of Sussex)
Amy Sodaro (CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College)
David Simon (Yale University)
Mykola Makhortykh (Universität Bern)

Program
Session 1: 10:00-11:30 

• Amy Sodaro: Mnemonic traces: digital encounters and the memory of slavery and its legacies”
• David Simon: Dilemmas in the Uncanny Valley: Between Witness and Dehumanization in VR and AR Memorialization
  Discussant: Hella Wiedmer-Newman 

Lunch & Break: 11:30-13:00

Session 2: 13:00-14:30

• Mykola Makhortykh: Willi Graf, do you support Bayern Munich? Challenges of studying interactions with digital simulations of suffering
• Paul Morrow: Digital Simulations and Sites of Holocaust Memory
  Discussant: Thomas Rainer

Coffee Break: 14:30-14:45

Session 3: 14:45-16:00

• Victoria Walden: Atrocity 'images' and AI: A Reflection on the Ontological Status of the Image and its Ethical Relationship with Genocide in the age of Gen-AI
  Discussant: Eduardo Harry Luersen

Concluding Discussion