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    MIT Project: How to escape to the West under the Berlin Wall
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    • MIT Project: How to escape to the West under the Berlin Wall

    MIT Project: How to escape to the West under the Berlin Wall

    Published on 20.09.2018

    School books take away that smell. Once you smell and zack you feel for the whiff of a second back in the classroom. The time when, for example, you fought your way through tomes about the division of Germany. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have presented us with a way to experience the material in a completely new way. And of course we’ll show you here.

    On August 17, WELT met the inventors from the MIT Media Lab during the “Signal & Noise” workshop in Berlin. A total of 48 students from 16 countries worked for a week on five projects that were supposed to break the boundaries of science – in an old church of all places.

    One of these projects brought the division of Germany to life. At a workshop in Berlin, it was a good idea and five contemporary witnesses shoveled free time for an interview, twelve hours of video material were created.

    Mit’s the 3D camera Matterport people and rooms were measured in order to translate our real world into virtual reality with 3D models.

    Dr. Scott Greenwald from the MIT Media Lab explains the advantage: “In the field of virtual reality documentaries, 3D / 360-degree technology is still often used today. This results in films that look very realistic, but only allow viewing from a certain position, without the user being able to move freely in the room.“

    In this project, we deliberately chose techniques that allow an application in which you can move.

    Greenwald knows of no other project in which the three elements volumetric videos, realistic 3D shots of rooms, and 3D modeling were brought together in the context of a documentary. But let’s get to the escape now:

    The virtual reality experience consists of three scenes, based on the stories of Ralf Kabisch, an escape helper.

    Let’s go!

    I. You are standing opposite the escape helper, in the stairwell of Bernauer Straße 97 in Berlin.

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    There used to be an empty bakery in this place. And it was from this bakery that Ralph Kabisch helped to dig a wall tunnel into the western part of Strelitzer Straße 55: most GDR citizens, a total of 57, were able to get to freedom via the “Tunnel 57”. While the escape helper reports about it, we are virtually at the place where the story happened.

    The image of Ralph Kabisch is not exactly bursting with detail, but the dog is buried somewhere else. You are impressed by the hallway with its details, you look at the crumbling wallpaper. The contemporary witness is quickly forgotten – that’s how it happens to me.

    In the next scene I’m not crawling through any tunnel.

    Three times you can guess by which one. It corresponds exactly to the scale of Tunnel 57 in Bernauer Straße.

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    I’m doing what Scott Greenwald wants to see: I’m ducking. After all, otherwise I will not pass through the tunnel. I also saw everyone else crawling at this scene.

    This shows that virtual reality is intuitively understood.

    Scott is relieved. Because if the scene does not require instructions, the illusion is convincing.

    In a minimalist 3D model of the area around Potsdamer Platz, Ralf Kabisch describes what he encountered here:

    After the fall of the Wall, GDR cars also drove in the west. Thus, the characteristic smell of the trabis came to places such as Potsdamer Platz or Kurfürstendamm. “It smelled like two-stroke exhaust; that sweetish exhaust stench.“

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    There were trabis on the Ku’damm. The tears came to me.

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    The virtual reality experiences should continue to be used. “The whole team, which was actually only put together for the workshop,” explains Scott, “is very enthusiastic about the project and we would like to continue working on it together. One possible goal is that the project could be used as an installation in a museum – for example, for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.“ That’s on November 9, 2019. Until then, the team can still do a lot of reworking.

    At the end of the workshop, the question remains: should we rather learn with virtual reality in the future?

    In virtual reality, we can touch and handle the learning material. Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, loves this approach:

    We learn much better when we do something about it.

    The only question is whether you will learn more if you not only hear the contemporary witness, but also get to know him from all sides.

    And what do you think is the point of crawling through the virtual tunnel? Should virtual reality at least partially replace the tome at schools, training companies and universities?

    Please comment on this!

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