re:Commemorate
re:Commemorate is an interactive, text-based installation that raises awareness of memorials in urban spaces
Shekinah Gitumbu
6th semester, 2025
Supervising lecturers: Max Studanski, Andreas Schindler and Prof. Tsunemitsu Tanaka
Invisible monuments?
Due to their static nature, monuments have become an integral part of our urban landscape and are therefore scarcely noticed by many city dwellers. Furthermore, many people can no longer identify with the often heroic form of traditional monuments.
Yet monuments are an important part of the urban landscape: they serve as tangible anchors of remembrance and cultural spaces of memory that make history visible and tangible. They help us to engage with our past. However, they can only fulfil this function if they are actively noticed and discussed by people.
The aim
The project is aimed at city dwellers and passers-by who walk past monuments in the urban landscape every day.
The aim is to foster a new awareness of monuments and to create a space for critical dialogue, where people can engage deeply with their significance and impact.
In this way, monuments are to become vibrant places of remembrance once again.
A Digital Counter-Monument
re:Commemorate is a site-specific installation positioned in front of heroic monuments in urban spaces. It projects text fragments onto the monument’s surroundings, including historical contexts, questions for reflection and the voices of the public. The installation responds to the presence and movements of passers-by and invites them to make their own contribution to the counter-monument via a public telephone installed on site. They can also interact with the text fragments. By the end of the installation, a collective picture of public opinion emerges. After seven days, the installation disappears and moves on to the next heroic monument.
The prototype
The first prototype was intended to illustrate how the text fragments behave within the urban space and how city dwellers and passers-by might interact with them.
Five text elements float in the space, with two of them following the user’s left hand and two following their right.
The system operates in real time and provides visual feedback
via a projector. The project was implemented using TouchDesigner and a Kinect v2.