The Mediality of the Immediate Witness: A New-Materialist Approach to the Production of the Digital Witness Figure in Encounters with Interactive 3D Testimonies
摘要
Interactive 3D testimonies are supposed to facilitate interactions “with” survivors of the Holocaust, even when they are physically absent. In mediating the witnesses’ presence, they aim at enabling encounters, which feel immediate to users, thus simulating “eyewitness talks.” Based on a new-materialist approach, this study explores the organization of affective flows within the assemblages which produce the digital witness. Drawing on empirical data from interviews with users and experts, as well as from observations of user interactions, this chapter looks at digital testimonies as reversible figures, in which either the witness or the mediating apparatus can take forefront. As digital witnesses oscillate between their immediate and “hypermediate” manifestations, they engender an ambiguous subject/object status. This contribution argues that we should take seriously the contradictions and ambiguities within the digital witness figure. It questions the replicative ideal of digital testimonies and advocates for a use that does not smooth their contradictions away, but recognizes the potential for irritation in a critical reflection on remembrance culture.