Virtual Time Machine in the Context of “The Figures of Memory” Project

Vesna Mikelić

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 35 (2019) no. 1.

Résumé

The unrestrained progress of technology in the first decades of the new millennium has led to changes that affect development in all areas of life, with consequences that affect our views and understanding of history, cultural heritage, and affect activities of museums too. The consequences of such changes are seen in the ways of collecting, storing, protecting, and displaying museum exhibits. The Virtual Time Machine is just one of the new approaches and applications of digitalization that has been applied to the Visitors’ and Memorial Books at the Museum of Yugoslavia. The narratives of the records left in the Visitors’ and Memorial Books, which in a way represent the reality and the various alternative visions of Yugoslav society until the end of the 20th century, are indisputably essential documents for the process of reification of reality that is characteristic of the Museum. The Virtual Time Machine is a link connecting the old and the new; it provided contemporary access to records within the project “Figures of Memory”. A digital collection of Memorial and Visitor’s Books was created, which made the content visible and accessible to the general public, which is of great importance for the “culture of remembrance in the Yugoslav context” (Đorgović 2019, 15).