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Social video art project created with virtual reality and volumetric capture. Dedicated to the 75th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp.
Lessons of Auschwitz
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engagements
The project is recognized at the international level, awarded with awards and included in the shortlists of prestigious festivals (Emmy, Reddot, Webby Awards and many others) - due to the unique synergy of history, storytelling, creative use of innovative technologies.

Auschwitz Lessons is a project dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Nine Moscow schoolchildren went to the memorial at the camp site and expressed their emotions from the visit, in the format of drawings in virtual reality.
Performance Year: 2020
Partners: RT Creative Lab
Duration: 2 months
Technology: #VR #Volumetric #Depthkit #KinectAzure

The project is recognized at the international level, awarded with awards and included in the shortlists of prestigious festivals (Emmy, Reddot, Webby Awards and many others) - due to the unique synergy of history, storytelling, creative use of innovative technologies.

Auschwitz Lessons is a project dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Nine Moscow schoolchildren went to the memorial at the camp site and expressed their emotions from the visit, in the format of drawings in virtual reality.
The project was a powerful social experiment that demonstrated that a story can be told, retold and reinterpreted by young storytellers. In this way, digital art and digital technologies strengthen the connection between generations.
Time passes and the voices of those who caught the events of the war fall silent. A new generation is growing up without witnesses to history. Children do not hear stories from eyewitnesses of those horrors, and that is why 9 Moscow schoolchildren became participants in the social experiment.

The Lessons of Auschwitz project is designed to remind us of the important task of bridging the gap between generations.
TRIBUTE TO WORLD HISTORY
The theme touches on aspects of history and is filled with bygone events of past years. It is possible to convey memories most deeply by embodying them in a new visual format, where new immersive instruments are used, touching music - everything that makes it possible to plunge into the context.

To achieve the desired effect, we transferred the images of children inside their digital drawings, and combined several realities in the final video.
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
Students of the Moscow school visited the memorial at the site of the Auschwitz camp and expressed their emotions about those events in a virtual reality format.

Such impressions are difficult to describe in words. That is why we have given children new tools to embody such deep experiences.

To create the drawings, the Tilt Brush tool was used - an application for creativity in VR format.
A NEW APPROACH TO CONVEYING EMOTIONS
We filmed the drawing process using Volumetric capture, a three-dimensional space capture technique that allows you to convert the images received by the camera into 3D.
SURVEY
Three-dimensional images of children were recreated in various effects that react to sound waves.
The music for the project was composed by composer Peter Theremin, who plays the oldest electronic instrument in the world - the theremin.

The sonorous vibrations of the instrument create a piercing effect of weeping, reflecting the pain and horror that everyone feels when thinking about Auschwitz.
MUSICAL SEQUENCE
In the final video, we combined the images of children, their drawings and the melody of the theremin.

To achieve such a stack, we conducted many experiments with different approaches:
  • Body capture and 3D effects
  • photogrammetry
  • 2.5D Shooting

The main tool was Unity, in which we worked on a bundle of 3D graphics and effects in real time.

Learn more about the project creation process
TECHNICAL PIPELINE
And it was working in 3D real-time based on Unity that allowed us to create reproductions of the video in virtual and augmented reality without any problems.

The experiment with AR and VR platforms was aimed at creating an even greater immersion effect, where the viewer was inside the video, "in the front rows", and could more deeply experience the impressions of the authors.
DIVE VARIABILITY
You can learn more about our experiments during the creation of the project:
2
Effy Awards


Performance year: 2020
Partners: RT Creative Lab
Duration: 2 months
Technology: #VR #Volumetric #Depthkit #KinectAzure
Ознакомьтесь с проектом подробнее на Behance:
Team
3D artists
Vlad Krutenyuk
Ekaterina Katsen
Pavel Postnikov
Project manager
Valery Fimmina
Ivan Yunickiy

Dev
Alexandr Kryuchkov
Alexei Lushnikov
Partners
RT Creative Lab
Denis Semenov
Piotr Termen
Media
Medium
Series of articles about the project
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4