UMD Student Creates VR Prototype of Cold War-Era Berlin for Newseum

by Daniel Oyefusi ’19 | Photos courtesy of Newseum

The daytime silence on an empty street in East Berlin is complete, and eerie. On one side, Communist propaganda posters are plastered on a brick wall. A barbed wire fence stands on the right, with police on patrol just around the corner.

This is one scene that brings to life the heart-pounding tensions of the Cold War through a new exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “Berlin Wall: The Virtual Reality Experience” opened over the summer, inspired by a prototype developed by Mukul Agarwal M.S. ’17, a human-computer interaction graduate student working in the Augmentarium at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

“We want to connect with visitors on an emotional level and help them understand the values that the museum recognizes and to promote, defend and explain the five freedoms of the First Amendment,” says Mitch Gelman, chief technology officer at the Newseum.

Newseum officials reached out to Amitabh Varshney, professor of computer science and director of UMIACS, to see if the museum could work with UMD to develop a proof of concept using virtual reality technology. Over three weeks last year, Agarwal worked with movie director Cutter Hodierne on the concept and storyline for the model, which Newseum officials then took to the company HTC Vive to create a more polished version.

“The thing that was exciting about this project is that it is being used in a real-world setting,” Varshney says.

Since the Newseum’s 2008 opening just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, an exhibit has featured pieces of the original Berlin Wall and an East Berlin guard tower, as well as images of the wall from news archives as part of its mission to showcase the value of freedom of the press. These artifacts were used to develop the model, but the virtual reality experience provides an added dimension to the historic period.

With the help of a VR headset and two handheld controllers, Newseum visitors can relive the anxiety of Berlin citizens. Over seven minutes, they’ll find themselves atop an overlooking guard tower, searching for courageous wall-jumpers, sifting through artifacts in a Berlin home, only to move a crate and find a hidden escape tunnel—and eventually using a sledgehammer to break down the wall that divided Germany for almost 30 years.

“I appreciated working with digital archivists and others at the Newseum on a topic that has so much historical significance,” Agarwal says. “(Working on the model) feels amazing. It feels good that I was a part of it and was able to make it happen successfully.”