MANEZH SQUARE, MOSCOW, USSR

Moscow in sept. 1990 is a city on the edge of historic change; hanging somewhere between perestroika and collapse, between reform and disintegration. Manzeth Square is a record of a mass, pro-democracy demonstration, one of the first of it’s kind, taking place in the traffic plaza just outside the Kremlin walls -a kind of audio ’advent calendar’ of the last days of the Soviet Union. The project consists of an interactive 3-D photo-composite. The viewer scrolls though the panoramic image and listens to an ambiant soundtrack of broadcast speeches and crowd reactions from that day. The viewer is able to move spatially through the crowd, scanning and zooming into various faces, and by ’clicking’ on individuals, can selectively activate a spoken ’interior monologue’ or video-clip picturing the Moscow of that time. When viewed on the web, the site encourages visitors to respond with their own thoughts. These contributions will be incorporated into an evolving series of monologues that form the on-screen content. The on-going goal of the project is to develop a primary source document, a first-hand diary/oral history of the last days of the Soviet Union focused through this singular event: the demonstration on sept. 16th in Manezh Square.