Jake Barton, founder of Local Projects, and Alice Greenwald, director of the National 9/11 Memorial Museum, shared their thoughts on the challenging and controversial nature in creating the National 9/11 Memorial Museum at the AIGA/NY: Making History: 9/11 Memorial Museum Media. The sold-out event, held on September 13, 2010 at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, at 20 Vassey Street, gave the audience an in-depth look at the considerations in planning of the museum, extensive previews of media clips, and explanations of key artifacts that will be housed within the museum.

One of the key challenges was addressing the two different extremes of visitors: those who lived through the event and are sharing their experience, and those who know nothing about the event. The museum gallery, called We Remember, seeks to leverage these differences through storytelling. “Everyone has a 9/11 story, no matter where we were on that day, even those too young to remember,” said Alice Greenwald. Therefore, the idea of evolving the history of 9/11 through storytelling became the hallmark of the museum’s concept.

Upon entering the museum, visitors will encounter witness accounts of other people telling their stories of where they were on September 11th. To gather these stories, Local Projects created a story booth, which has collected over 3,000 stories since launching at the Museum Preview Site in 2009. Jake Barton added, ”I encourage everyone to come and record [his or her] own story. Its simple: you go in the booth, locate yourself on a map, where you were [that day], and you tell your story.”

The site of the museum is a story in itself. The museum is situated 70 feet below ground, inside the original concrete walls of the Twin Towers, thus placing its visitors inside an artifact. Therefore, it was imperative to make the media and exhibition design feel as authentic and raw as the concrete walls that surround its visitors. Alice Greenwald explained that “the core historical exhibition will cover the events of the day, provide background historical context of the attacks, explore who did this and why, and narrate the aftermath of the recovery period, and examining the unfolding impact of 9/11.”

Another challenge in telling the complete story of 9/11 was representing the experience from inside the towers. Only a handful of photos from inside the towers exist, as the majority of images depict the exterior of the buildings. Jake Barton explained that the solution was to use oral histories and artifactual media, “media that’s raw, unedited, and speaks to embody the human events from that day” to offer visitors the experience of what happened inside the towers. This media will consist of real-time FDNY radio transmissions and dispatch calls, transmissions from NYPD helicopters, and reports from firefighters inside the towers. The unedited audio file places the audience inside the towers, without any curatorial voice.

Next, Jake Barton discussed Make History, a web-based project where people are asked to submit their own photos, written accounts, videos of 9/11.

He also demonstrated Explore 9/11, an iPhone app that, among other features, uses and overlays photos from 9/11 to “create a double vision between the past and the present,” says Barton.

It is often said that 9/11 is the most documented event in human history. As the National 9/11 Memorial Museum continues to sift through existing digital archives, as well as create new media over the next two years, the principles guiding their process will be defined by what’s important, what’s worth saving, how we make sense of it and how we communicate it to future generations.

An audience Q&A concluded the event.

The National September 11 Memorial Museum is scheduled to open in 2012.

For more information, visit

National September 11 Memorial Museum:

http://www.national911memorial.org

Add Your Story to Make History:

http://makehistory.national911memorial.org/

Explore 9/11 iPhone App NYT Review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/nyregion/12critic.html

Local Projects:

http://www.localprojects.net

To view event details, visit

AIGA/NY Making History: 9/11 Memorial Museum Media: http://2006.aigany.org/events/details/11MH/

To view additional photos, please visit our Flickr photostream. We encourage our members to contribute their photos to the AIGA New York Flickr group.