Re: IFFM 2.0

I  completely endorse this. Even in its unreformed state, the museum provided a brilliant experience. Thank heaven for Eurostar etc. - it's now so relatively easy to get to Ypres/Ieper, which in my youth was not much more accessible than Xanadu!

On 22 October 2012 09:25, Elsa Franker <elsafranker@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Dear Chris,

This sounds amazing. I was most impressed when seeing the museum as it was, but with the help of the latest technology you have brought it all several steps further to give the visitor as real as possible an experience of the Flanders Fields.

The view from the Cloth Hall Tower must be impressive. From what I remember, the area around Ieper is very flat, so one should be able to see for miles and miles around.

I also remember the museum shop to be very well-stocked with WWI literature as well as WWI souvenirs. It´s even better now, I gather.

One of the things that made the deepest impression on me was the focus of it all. Instead of "so many tanks on that side and so many rifles on that side", the focus was on how the WWI affected the people who were hit by it, whether they were military personnel or civilians who just happened to be caught in a cross-fire, because their home was situated where it was.

Hoping to be able to visit Belgium and Ieper before too long.

Best

Elsa

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From: Chris Spriet <gratienne.leclercq@gmail.com>
To: ww1lit@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 16 October 2012, 14:24
Subject: IFFM 2.0

Dear Elsa,

Firstly, the museum has doubled in size. It now occupies the full first floor of the Cloth Hall.

At the start of the visit, one picks up a digital-chip bracelet at the reception desk; arriving upstairs one logs on to a computer, feeding one's own data into the system. This system enables the vsitor to follow a tailor-made personal trajectory through the museum, as, indeed, one follows one specific civilian or military participant of the war in his tracks.

Along one's track one will first be able to watch several digital video displays introducing the "big" overall story of the war. Then, as one continues, one can take time to watch some personal testimonies, all of which are linked up with authentic clothes or artefacts from the war. One of these deals with the Christmas Truces (Xmas 1914), another with Fritz Haber (the scientist who developed the lethal gases), and yet another (and a very poignant) one with a statement from a book by war author Eric Hiscock, to mention but a few.

A very special feature is the combination of aerial period photography which is matched with present-day footage of the battlefields.

One of the most lasting impressions one gets is the view of a slice from an age-old trunk of a tree (a summer oak) that survived the war while encapsulating the black spots and scars that were the reminders of the attacks and violence it too suffered. The tree itself reached teh age of around 250 years and dendrochronologists succeeded in narrowing down the period when these scars 'hit' the tree to the war years.

As one walks downstairs to the museum shop one can make a printout of the data on the chip bracelet and take the personal story homùe with oneself.

Finally there is something I should not forget: for the first time ever, the Cloth hall tower has been made accessible to the visitor; this enables him to take in the 360° view of the Western Front itself, where so many young lives were wasted during those horrible 4 1/2 years.

Best,

Chris

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