The Hiroshima Project

by Akke Wagenaar
information

The Hiroshima Project is a network based information project.

"200 million people were killed so far in this century. We have no right to call other centuries barbaric. We are the most barbaric century in history. And the organisation which has made it all possible is the state."
(Martin van Creveld, military expert, in an interview on Dutch television, October 18, 1995)

50 years ago

50 years ago the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Over 92.000 people were killed in the flash of an instant (1), an estimated 150.000-200.000 died in the months thereafter (2), and today still 400.000 are under medical or psychological treatment (3). What the long-term effects of this explosion, and of the more than 1788 (4) known test explosions that followed, on genetic material will be is still under investigation (5).
The first use of an atomic bomb in the history of warfare was only the culmination of a series of gruesome, cruel events which were the result of half a century of modern warfare, which had introduced murder of civilian masses on a global scale by employing advanced technology.
By the time World War II had ended, 20 million Russian civilians, 10 million Chinese civilians and 6 million European-Jewish civilians had died (6); globally a total of around 55 million civilians and soldiers had died (7).
The first use of an atomic bom in warfare also marked the beginning of a new era. The immensity of the unleashed energy of an exploding atomic bomb shocked scientists, military people and civilians alike: the first global problem of this century had been created, and there was no way back.
The bomb on Hiroshima became a world wide symbol for the threat of the existence of our planet and all life on it, a threat that in the 50 years that have passed since, we have learned to live with and, almost, to ignore.

(1) High Energy Weapons (introduction text), Gary K. Au. Sydney, 1995.
(2) Imidas, Innovative Multi-Information Dictionary, Annual Series, p. 311. Tokyo: Sheisha, 1991.
(3) Die Atombombe im japanischen Spielfilm, Barbara Geschwinde (unpublished thesis). Gelsenkirchen, 1995.
(4) Catalog of known and putative nuclear explosions from unclassified sources, Oklohama Geological Survey Observatory. Oklohama 1994.
(5) See: Radiaton Effects Research Foundation, Japan.(http://aqua.rerf.or.jp)
(6) High Energy Weapons (introduction text), Gary K. Au. Sydney, 1995.
(7) Jahre unseres Lebens 1945-1949, Dieter Franck. Hamburg: Rororo, 1983.

Some thoughts

The 2 big events of this century:
1. World War II, mass murder on global scale, culminating in the atomic bomb, murder for the advanced
2. the digital revolution, culminating in a communication and information explosion (or implosion)

50 years after the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the global systems of communication and information are on the verge of explosion as well.
It might be good to stand still for a moment and look back.

Victim and perpetrator/raper/killer have always been miles apart in their psychological spaces. This applies to inviduals al well as ethnic groups or countries. (It is the perpetrator's main task to deny the real implications of what he has brought about).

Suddenly the Internet came in between. Whatever digital communication does, it also enables bridging large gaps, for instance those between former enemies.

The invention of the computer, the development of artificial intelligence and the implementation of the Internet were all instigated for military purposes.

The event of the atomic bomb was of such great horror, high impact, beyond human understanding, that for a long, long time it may be necessary and valuable to take a closer look at various aspects which have been hidden under the dust of memory.

The winner doesn't have a monopoly on suffering.

How are we, the world, dealing with 50 years of Hiroshima?

The Hiroshima Project is a network based information project.

It is a guided tour through the World Wide Web, taking the visitor along World Wide Web sites all over the world which have information about the atomic bomb on Hiroshima 50 years ago and its commemoration in 1995.
The tour is structured like a documentary television series would be, but it's non-linear, interactive and open-ended, and can be accessed like a database or catalog.
The Hiroshima Project not only gives information about the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the 50 years thereafter, it also informs about the information on the atomic bomb (which informs about the non-information as well). It doesn't just show the valuable information, it also shows the non-interest, the denial and the ignorance.
It juxtaposes geographical and cultural opposites, crosses boundaries between perpetrators and victims. It shows how the world is currently dealing with this event, and with the life-threat that the knowledge of production of atomic bombs imposes on us.
The Hiroshima Project shows how this theme has been transformed in literature, film and the arts. The project converges into, circles around and leads back to one central document: the book 'Black Rain' by Masuji Ibuse. This book confronts the reader with the incomprehensible by means of poetic experience. The context is no longer global - on the contrary, in this book the context is very personal: individual humans are confronted with the brute energy unleashed by the atomic bomb explosion, and one by one they undergo the devastating effects this energy has on them.

The Hiroshima Project incorporates:

- an information trail through the World Wide Web
- a local database of information (in cooperation with Barbara Geschwinde)
- a pointer to the home page of the interactive installation "Vbody Rbody"
(by Akke Wagenaar, Masahiro Miwa, Michael Hoch & Matthias Melcher)
- a reference database

The visitor of the Hiroshima Project can follow the order given by the Hiroshima Project - if he or she does the whole tour it will take a couple of days.
But the visitor can also follow his or her own order, using the navigation buttons, and approaching parts of the Hiroshima Project by choosing chapters and subjects.
Because each page of the Hiroshima Project has the same graphic layout, the viewer knows whether he or she is inside the Hiroshima Project, or outside of it, in one of the documents somewhere in the world to which he or she has been linked.

Creation of the Hiroshima Project

Search engines (software available on the WWW, used to find documents existing globally on the Internet) were used to search for and collect around 2000 documents from all over the world, which were dealing with the subject of Hiroshima, the atomic bomb and its effects. The documents were then brought into a structure called 'The Guided Tour', in order to create an interactive scenario and facilitate access.
The Hiroshima Project consists of around 150 pages, each page containing several links to other home pages on the WWW. Pages and links within the Hiroshima Project are ordered by subject.
The Hiroshima Project does not add new information to the WWW - it orders the existing information which was unordered and chaotic before. Information became the basic artist's working material.

Experiences with the Hiroshima Project and the WWW

In 1995, the Hiroshima Project was exhibited at the following exhibitions: 'Ars Electronica 1995' in Linz, Austria; at the exhibition 'AFTER HIROSHIMA - Message from Contemporary Art' in the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan; and at the 'Digital Salon', Museum of Visual Arts in New York.
In 1996 it is presented at the World Wide Video Festival in The Hague, the Netherlands.
It was also presented at the following conferences: 'NERVEgate', in Toronto, Canada; 'The Dynamics of Technology and Creativity' in Osaka, Japan, and at 'Understanding Interactivity' in Tallinn, Estonia.
In general, the responses from audiences where very positive. The Hiroshima Project was considered to be an important project because of its concept.
However, I would like to stress here that within the Hiroshima Project, none of the available information exceeds the quality of an average book about the subject (many excellent books have been written on the subject).
The number of WWW hits on the Hiroshima Project was around 250 weekly in the beginning, increasing to 12.500 a month in March 1996.

Accessing the Hiroshima Project

The Hiroshima Project can be accessed in three ways:
- a World Wide Web site on the Internet can be accessed with standard World Wide Web client software which can read HTML documents
- a 3-D navigator, accessible on the Internet, enables navigation in a data landscape.
The 3-D navigator is written in VRML, and can be read by browsers which can read VRML documents.
- during exhibitions, the viewer can use a dedicated terminal for access which enables fast access.

Navigation in the Hiroshima Project:

The Hiroshima project will be in continuous development during the years 1995 and 1996.


The development and continuation of the Hiroshima Project have been made possible by the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, and the Foundation for the Arts, Design and Architecture in the Netherlands.