Multimedia History

In the weekly computer-science magazine Számítástechinka, 15 October 2002.

In the middle of the past few months’ political and ideological skirmish we have almost forgot that our first and so far only unique Hungarian multimedia musem, the House of Terror was opened in February.

A few weeks ago, a Hungarian friend of mine who was brought up in Germany told me how thrilled he was when visiting the House of Terror. This is after all not a surprise since the museum is unequalled not only in Hungary but rarely can you find another in Europe where this amount of data–pictures, films, texts–is presented to the public with cutting-edge technology in a form that people do not even know after a short while where to look at. My friend was impressed by the exhibition and he did not question the credibility of what he saw. Grown up in the former Eastern part of Germany, the presented methods may have not been entirely new to him. (Hopefully those still incredulous will soon also be convinced, as the turmoil over the musem lets up and concurrently the content of the museum is being enriched.)
The claptrap after all has proved to be successful.
The House of Terror is not a traditional museum. You encounter only few material objects, instead the meaning of the exhibition is brought to you by the interior design and other, non-traditional ways of expression. All this is spread around the ground floor, the first and second floors as well as the notorious cellars, the inner yard and along the staircase.

Upon entering the first room the visitors find themselves in the middle of small monitors and bigger plasma TV-s, showing old films and interviews; using the presented telephones you are able to listen to old recordings; and as the lift descends to the cellar lockups on the monitor you see an eyewitness talking about the hanging procedures. There are altogether 10 PC terminals with touch screens in the rooms with various texts, data and documents as well as digital pictures reflecting the mood of old times. The IT system was formulated and co-ordinated—with advise also on the design—by C.Enter Kft. (C.Enter Information-Technology Ltd.) and we got to know it from CEO Zoltán Csáki that upon the cutting-edge technology possibilities the experts of the company were aiming at rational pure simplicity avoiding cheap, kitsch solutions. All the data of the exhibition is stored on a central database and the information is delivered to visitors on 118 displayers out of which 46 are plasma TV-s. In case the serves goes down the monitors can still display the information via separate PC-s. There are monitors that display hours of data stored, such as in the justice room where the film about Imre Nagy is more than an hour long and is continuously repeated.

Apart from the telephones and the lift all the terminals and monitors in the lift are connected to one system, which is a unique application developed by Mimóza Kommunikációs Kft. (Mimóza Communication Ltd.). All the moving and still pictures as well as the data are presented via this application. The editor system is also developed by the company: it digitalises and then transfers the printed or electronic material made by historians to the public. Everything—pictures, fliers and films—is stored in a digital form in the museum enabling the visitors to enjoy exactly the same quality still years later. Intranet and internet are also based on the database. As a result of the web-design made by Econet everybody can enjoy a fast internet connection—also easily downloadable by a modem. While the forum is strongly effected by daily politics, under OUR STORIES you can already read interesting texts, what more you can also upload your own story. The design and structure of the internet and intranet sites are also similar, but the internet sites only offer an insight in the museum world, encouraging this way people to go and actually visit the museum. However, a foreigner checking the sites from abroad may be happier to see a little more detailed online introduction.

For English and German speaking visitors it is rather convenient to use the infra guide. This guide senses when the visitor enters the next room and automatically starts introducing it. For the safety of the headphones upon entrance the visitors receive a card, not letting them forget to return the headphones after leaving the museum. The entire electronic system of the museum cost hundreds of millions of HUF (far more than 4-5 million Euros) and is being continuously supervised and managed by five people.

Attila M. Tibor