Talking with our Past in the Future: From the Holocaust to Digital Interactive Holography

May 18, 2016

5 -6:30 p.m.

UC Irvine, Merage School Auditorium (SB1, First Floor, Room 1200)

Speaker: Stephen Smith, Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation

Pinchas Gutter has told his story many times. Of the horrors of childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto. Of being ripped away from his parents and 10-year-old twin sister the day the family arrived at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, never to see them again. Of barely surviving a brutal Nazi prisoner "death march" away from front lines and allied forces. Of his liberation in 1945.

The story never loses its power, its agony, or its moments of hope. Only this time it's not the 80-year-old Gutter who's telling his tale; it’s a full-body representation of the Holocaust survivor. The digital image is a product of New Dimensions in Testimony, a high-tech initiative at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies designed to record survivors' first-person accounts for interactive 3D exhibits that live on long after the storytellers have passed. At the narrative-driven helm of the project is Stephen Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation, who asked Gutter and a number of other survivors hundreds of questions while on a light stage measuring 26 feet in diameter, surrounded by high-speed cameras and more than 6000 LED lights.

The UCI School of Social Sciences, in partnership with the UCI Office of the Chancellor, the Rose Project of the Jewish Federation & Family Services and Hillel at UCI, invite you to hear from Smith as he details the project’s history, progress and future.

RSVPs are requested online at http://bit.ly/1MO2ygw.