Chernobyl as Total Installation: Planning and Implementation
Submission Type
20-minute Presentation
Abstract
The final course project in RUSS043 Chernobyl: Nuclear Narratives & the Environment (Swarthmore College, Spring 2020) merges digital and public humanities tools to spread greater understanding of the Chernobyl disaster. Using an analog space (a mock control room modeled on the Chernobyl plant), students explore various facets of the disaster through digital media to craft an interactive “total installation” that invites audience members to experience and learn about Chernobyl in novel ways. This presentation seeks to share some potential benefits and strategies learned from designing such an expansive project.
Start Date
7-20-2020 12:10 PM
End Date
7-20-2020 12:30 PM
Description
In this presentation, José Vergara (Russian) and Michael Jones (Language Center) from Swarthmore will explore the benefits of the final class project they and students are designing in the course RUSS043 Chernobyl: Nuclear Narratives & the Environment. Part research project, part “total installation” in the style of the Russian Conceptualist artists, this project consists of a mock nuclear reactor control room modeled on the Chernobyl plant. Within this space, we’ll construct a control board with mounted iPads that audience members can interact with. Students will generate materials for these stations including information on various texts (both on the syllabus and not), video, sound design, and other digital tools (StoryMap, ArcGIS, Storyline, Timeline, Soundcite, etc.). What exactly students do is ultimately up to them (in consultation with the instructor and support team), but it does require them to engage with these digital media to reconsider how they can tell stories and share research beyond the confines of the classroom.
Students will explore the possibilities of curation using both digital and analog materials, merging the two. In essence, the project requires students to think about how we might present the course material to a public audience in a manner that is both widely accessible and academically rigorous. After the very positive reception of HBO/Sky’s Chernobyl, this exhibition will be an excellent opportunity for students to use their newfound knowledge to further expand our understanding of this cultural phenomenon. The digital humanities, as embodied in this project, present exciting tools for doing so. These platforms will require students to not only interact and study texts in ways that may be unfamiliar to them, but then to be able to convey that information in a meaningful way. For example, a student might elect to analyze the sound design of various Chernobyl-related artifacts (Stalker, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Innocent Saturday, etc.) and afterward produce the audio that will play when someone enters the installation. Alternatively, someone may choose to build a StoryMap to trace how these narratives radiate(!) outward from Pripyat, conceptualizing them in both time and space much differently than one might in a traditional paper. In short, this exercise requires students to approach the history and development of the Chernobyl Text in a novel way. This case study will thus illustrate the values of and potential paths to merging the public humanities with the digital humanities.
Chernobyl as Total Installation: Planning and Implementation
The final course project in RUSS043 Chernobyl: Nuclear Narratives & the Environment (Swarthmore College, Spring 2020) merges digital and public humanities tools to spread greater understanding of the Chernobyl disaster. Using an analog space (a mock control room modeled on the Chernobyl plant), students explore various facets of the disaster through digital media to craft an interactive “total installation” that invites audience members to experience and learn about Chernobyl in novel ways. This presentation seeks to share some potential benefits and strategies learned from designing such an expansive project.