Tracing Tainted Environments: Legacies of Oranienburg

Summary

Thomas Ness, Habakuk Israel, Hanna Wiesener

Traces refer directly to the past. What is no longer there, no longer visible, but nevertheless legible as a trace, is physically perceptible in its imprint. This special quality of the trace, consisting of both material and the absent at the same time, in which past and present intersect, enables a trace concept that contrasts sign systems with the thingness and physicality of the trace (Sybille Krämer et al. 2006). Does this concept of the trace as an »orientation technique and art of knowledge« (Krämer) result in a robustness of the trace as a mediator of information that points beyond the purely symbolic and therefore better bridges cultural and temporal distances?
Reading traces is a reciprocal filtering technique when the event that left the trace is reconstructed and interpreted in the negative imprint. But how can this process of interpretation succeed when traces are almost invisible, impalpable, and therefore difficult for the human senses to perceive? Particulate matter, microplastics, or radioactive residues are invisible evidence of our current industries that can only be detected by laboratories or professional measuring tools. Conveyed solely via signs and symbols, they lose their tangible dimension and elude physical interpretation, yet the physical danger of exposure remains.
What potential therefore arises from the integration of traces for the effective communication of information, especially when it comes to the appropriate handling of radioactive residues? The atomic tininess contrasts with the monstrous danger and toxicity that nuclear residues exude, even over extremely long periods. Nuclear waste poses a particular challenge in dealing with toxic, industrial residues, and design concepts are needed today for its safe storage and clear assessment in the distant future.
In the three-day workshop Tracing tainted environments: Legacies of Oranienburg, the interdisciplinary team from design, computer science, art, and cultural studies examined various concepts of dealing with radioactive waste and the historical environmental impact of the industrial site of Oranienburg. While exploring the history of radioactive legacies in Oranienburg, we were confronted with different types of information: traces of the former industrial sites and bombings, symbols, maps, or signs of cleaning and securing as well as memorials as part of today's culture of remembrance. Oranienburg, with its multi-layered historical legacies, but also the land activations that have taken place, thus offered a concrete environment for the workshop questions as a field of research and experimentation. In the workshop, the respective perspectives on dealing with measurement data and environmental pollution from the disciplines of human-computer interaction, design, history as well as cultural and political sciences were brought together and discussed and initial concepts were created in design sprints.
In a series of experiments, lectures, and excursions, we explored and discussed the various approaches to conveying information in the context of nuclear legacies to develop new strategies for keeping knowledge about radioactivity and its dangers accessible, tangible, and legible for very distant future generations.

Excursion Filtering Oranienburg

Lena Schubert, Alwin J. Cubasch, Christian Kassung

The workshop also included an excursion to Oranienburg, one of the most radioactively contaminated areas in Germany. The elevated radiation levels on site can be traced back to two factory sites belonging to the Berlin-based Auergesellschaft, which processed radioactive raw materials there from 1926 to 1945, including into lighting products. This process can be understood as the commodification of radioactivity and is a prehistory of the current rare earth boom.
This industrial history is no longer directly present on site since the destruction of the production facilities in an area bombardment in 1945. However, the increased radiation levels, as well as the covering of the contaminated areas, bear witness to the nuclear past. During the excursion, these traces were supplemented by results from the cluster research project »Filtering Oranienburg«, which stem from several months of archive research. Various archives in Berlin, Potsdam, and Vienna were visited to understand how commodification took place on-site and how the contaminated environment in Oranienburg was created.
One document stood out in particular: the graphic of a product tree, presumably from the 1930s, issued by the Auer company to illustrate its production range. The most important product was undoubtedly the annealing sockets impregnated with a radiant thorium-cerium fluid, see illustration above left. With this graphic, Auergesellschaft also presents itself as a manufacturer of lighters, medical products, and the radioactive toothpaste Doramad. It also advertises a wide range of chemical preparations. Interestingly, the underlying raw material, monazite sand, is also depicted, here in the form of a heap from which the product branch grows.

The graphic is so striking because it leaves much invisible. However, the »Filtering Oranienburg« project has been able to reconstruct some of the things that this product tree does not show thanks to the research carried out in recent months: tons of monazite sand that were shipped to Oranienburg via Hamburg from various mining areas around the world over decades and stored on-site in gigantic sheds. The filter technologies that were used on site to process the monazite sand into thorium and other rare earths. The material knowledge behind these processes, as well as the development of various lighting and medical products. The workers at Auerwerke, as well as the namesake Carl Auer von Welsbach, a chemist and entrepreneur who combined basic research with product development and could already look back on founding companies in Austria when he entered the German market.
All these complex structures remain invisible in the graphic. One particularly important characteristic of the product tree becomes clear in the subtext of the illustration: its radioactivity. In the illustration, the radiation is presumably indicated by the jagged aureoles surrounding the products in question. What remains invisible in this graphic evocation of radioactive potential are the toxic effects of production: the acidic wastewater that was discharged in large quantities into Oranienburg's waters for decades and possibly also the isolated, sometimes fatal illnesses of factory workers.
Traces of this history can be found in the archives consulted. During the excursion, these findings were linked to the experience of the urban landscape on site.

Atomic semiotics and long-term documentation

Hanna Wiesener

Benjamin Offen from the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) provided an overview of the handling of highly radioactive nuclear waste. Even though the last nuclear power plants will be shut down in 2023, the seventy years of civilian use of nuclear power will leave behind highly radioactive fuel rods and waste that cannot currently be reprocessed. Since the 1960s, research and negotiations have therefore been underway in Germany and internationally to find locations and concepts for final storage. Alongside the as-yet unresolved question of how to safely dispose of the material remains is the search for a suitable way of dealing with the immaterial heritage: how can the current state of knowledge be effectively passed on to guarantee the safe use of radioactivity over a multitude of media leaps for at least 500 years to come? How can the nuclear cultural heritage remain legible and institutionally preserved in the hope that future generations will be able to reprocess the toxic legacy and prevent misuse? BASE's 'long-term documentation' department is therefore systematically collecting analog and digital data and archive materials on the nuclear repository to make them available for at least 500 years. The basic strategy of long-term documentation is divided into two parts so that a short key information file in simple language provides the essential information on the repository site for the entire population. On the second level, the most necessary technical documents and data are then secured in the set of essential records, which serve to assess potential hazards for the safe handling of the repository. In various projects, BASE is researching ways of improving the durability of paper, ink, and printing processes (Labest paper) as well as digital storage processes (Labest digital).
In addition to strategies for long-term documentation of the BASE, Benjamin Offen also presented concepts for effective marking of the repository, which have been developed and discussed in recent decades under the term atomic semiotics. The approaches range from architectural markings of deterrence to newly introduced cultural rituals and genetic manipulation of surrounding plants and animals. Since language-based signs only remain understandable to a limited extent over longer periods and symbols and pictograms are also tied to cultural practices and thus temporal, BASE currently favors approaches that incorporate a universal because physical and spatial experience - an approach that we share with Information Physicalization.

Traces in AR for information dissemination in public spaces

Dr. Linda Hirsch

Traces of use reveal entanglements between people, environments, and substances (Rosner et al., 2013). In the context of tainted environments, traces are often invisible without the necessary equipment, such as a radio frequency meter. The situation is similar to digital data, which is invisible and disembodied by nature. In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), researchers have explored approaches and means to visualize and physicalize data, including invisible (digital) traces of use. For example, by highlighting touched surfaces in a public elevator, users could replicate or try to avoid the same highlighted touch interaction. Thus, HCI research has experience in influencing users’ behavior by affording their interaction through an adapted interface design. The process of revealing such traces is complex and context-sensitive, comprising multiple steps to arrive at an easy-to-understand, meaningful design that triggers the association intended by the designer.
The talk »Revealing Socio-Cultural Traces« and the following workshop shared insights into trace characteristics, design approaches, criteria, and challenges from an HCI perspective. Further, the talk introduced multiple project examples highlighting how tangible interfaces and extended reality technologies can be developed to support a meaningful integration and trace design into an interaction. The talk also emphasized the range of conceptual integration when designing with traces – from one-time interactions to accumulated, constantly evolving traces, such as desire paths in parks, or from purposefully left traces by users to so-called »by-products« of an interaction.
In HCI, traces have two origins – traces that naturally exist and those created for interaction.
Either way, they are not designed to manipulate users. Instead, they are supposed to increase awareness and contextualize a situation, leaving it up to the user to decide how to react to the provided information. Furthermore, traces can be accumulated and represent behavior and interaction patterns (Kravi et al., 2016) but also resemble highly personal experiences without a clear pattern (Tsai et al., 2018). All these aspects are relevant to consider when making design decisions and depend on the context and goal.
In the interactive workshop part, participants created their ideas of revealing traces for different scenarios in smaller groups. For example, one group used black light color to reveal additional information only when exposed to black light (see the image). By this, the black light color traces add a level of information under predefined conditions, enabling users to make a more informed decision about how to further interact.
Relating this hands-on experience to tainted environments, revealing traces is only the first, yet crucial step that provides evidence of the environment’s state. Confronting users with this evidence can make it easier for them to understand the restrictions and access limitations and thus, supports a voluntary behavior change. However, modern technologies are still in their infancy when applied and designed for interaction with tainted environments.

Design Sprint: Distant Futures and Embedding in the »Cultural Heritage«

Thomas Ness, Hanna Wiesener, Michelle Müller

Concerning the transmission of information, embedding in the »cultural heritage« is considered to be a method with a long and secure mode of action to prevent information from no longer being able to be transmitted due to media disruptions or technological obsolescence. For design, the long periods of between 50 and 500,000 years represent a major challenge in the development of usage scenarios and design approaches. In the design sprints on the third day, we took the approach of selecting specific periods and examining them in depth from different perspectives to generate tangible and discussable content in the interdisciplinary groups. To this end, we developed a framework for creating the various contexts as a starting point for generating ideas quickly. After an interim evaluation, we further condensed, visualized, and expanded the most promising ideas in short concepts.
However, the aim or strength of the workshop was not so much the elaborated concepts as the findings and insights that emerged in the context of concept development and discussion, as these can be used to derive central questions, a better understanding of the problem, and initial findings for the further design research process.

Contributors

Prof. Thomas Ness
Prof. Dr. Habakuk Israel
Hanna Wiesener
Lena Schubert
Dr. Linda Hirsch (LMU München)
Prof. Dr. Christian Kassung
Alwin Cubasch
Prof. Dr. Jörg Petruschat
Michelle Müller
June Audirac
Matthias Budde (Technische Universität Berlin)
Sybille Neumeyer
Dr. Mareike Stoll
Manja Wischer
Nofar Zeidenshnir (weißensee school of art and design)

References

Sybille Krämer, Werner Kogge und Gernot Grube (Hrsg.): Spur. Spurenlesen als Orientierungstechnik und Wissenskunst; Suhrkamp 2006
Jörg Petruschat, Julian Adenauer: Prototype! form+zweck 2012
Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung: »Atomausstieg in Deutschland« BASE 2022