Hey guys!
My background on the 9/11 Memorial Museum – before the visit (duh!) – was the one based on comments of tourists, and most of those had a deep and sad tone to it. I’ve heard of the fire trucks inside, heard about the remains of the two towers. But sincerely, I had no idea what to expect.
Upon entering the Memorial my first instinct was to ignore the event and focus exclusively in the platforms the curators chose to tell the story. It was a really hard task, manly because this whole Memorial is a huge immersive experience, not only the screens, touch screens, rests of the defunct towers, and objects took from the site Zero are there to tell you the story but the whole structure of the building is there to help convey it.
The building is basically an analogy to the definition of immersion. The enter way is from above, it’s illuminated and bright (glass windows); you start to decent to where the sun light can’t reach and the lights are dimmed down, and then you descent more where’s still darker them before. When arriving in the main floor of the exposition you’re about 4 to 5 floors below ground floor surrounded by walls and in some places under a low ceiling.
The first time I sat down to right some notes I was halfway between the entrance of the Memorial and the main floor, my first note reads ” Why I’m looking down all the time?”. I was thinking about after going thru the Memorial and one explanation that I can’t think of is that looking down is usually a gesture that represents pity, it’s a solemn gesture. In a funeral one not only looks down in to the grave but looking down is the standard posture. Do you guys think that this was intentional? (I guess it might be)
Back to the story telling, the time-line of the World Trade Center was really way depict, it goes from it’s idealization, to it’s construction, it’s importance, a homage to those who perished in attack, the incident of 9/11, the Ground Zero, the Islam/Alqaeda side of it, the pos Ground Zero, and the museum store.
From this timeline what I find really interesting is the fact that the homage to the victims comes before the description of the attack. And this was intentional, for till this point (South Tower Excavation Site) the exhibition only presents artifacts that were not at the site of the World Trade Center, they were miscellaneous (Bike from a fire fighter, an American flag made from parts from other flags from different states, art pieces…). The South Tower Excavation Site ends in a movie that, all tough, I did not watch it I stood still at the exit of it, to see normal looking visitors become red faced, crying (or almost) figures. After this movie you’re take through the homage to the fallen ones. Pictures humanizing the statistics: ~ 3000 deaths.
The difference in the posture of the visitors from before and after this part of the exhibition is impressive. Before you can see a great number of people going about with their cameras/phones in hand, almost experiencing the Memorial thru the screen. After the South Tower Excavation Site the amount of cameras is greatly reduced and the crowd a bit quitter.
Regarding interactive mediums there’re basically touch screes with different functions. The first presented allows the visitor to search for victims and show some information about them (including family testimonials). After those, there is a couple more by the end of the exhibition that translate messages left by fire figther and cops in a pillar. And a screen that allows the visitor to write a message in a screen, the message is them projected against a wall.
All together was a pretty interesting visit, impressive in most ways. I’ll refrain myself from further discussing what I personally think of the Memorial.
