A Family Split Apart by WWII Is Reunited in Lebuse's Letters
by Lance Elko
Originally published in the August 1997 issue of Computer Shopper
Lebuse's Letters from Coremax is
a refreshing change of pace from
the multimedia mainstream. A
labor of love created, developed,
and published by computer artist
Robert Linehan, it tells the true
story of three sisters trying to
reconnect during and after World
War II. Linehan began the project
as a digital thesis paper for The
School of the Visual Arts after
discovering a packet of documents (correspondence, notes, and photos, all
tied together by a blue satin ribbon) belonging to his grandmother, one of the
sisters, who had recently died.
To convey his literal sense of discovery, Linehan opens the title with a
grouping of 12 images bound together by a blue ribbon. Dvorak's New World
Symphony plays in the background--an appropriate link between the Czech
sister, Lebuse, and the two who left Prague: Blanche and Emily, Linehan's
grandmother. Selecting any of the dozen images evokes a new screen
anchored by a main document--a letter from Emily to the Czech ministry, a
response from the American Red Cross, or a hand-written note from Lebuse,
for example. Each document is adorned by surrounding images such as
newspaper headlines, letters, stamps, paintings, photos, and icons that
augment the part of the story that is established by the central document.
Clicking on any of the companion images reveals pieces of the story. A photo
could turn into a video clip that shows the sisters together as youngsters in
Prague; another image could produce an audio clip of a comment made by a
family member; a birth announcement could turn into a baby photo; and
another photo could, as an ominous foreshadowing, suddenly shatter like the
glass of a broken picture frame. Screens and images are not chronological; the
story unfolds much as it did for Linehan--by finding items one piece at a time.
But this isn't meant to be a puzzle; it's an interactive exploration of collages
built with images, video, voices, and sounds. By gradual immersion, the user
discovers the painstaking journey of Emily's decades-long search for her sister
and Lebuse's sorrowful plight as an eventual prisoner in Siberia. It's a
fascinating, albeit terribly sad, journey.
The singular quality of this disc is the story it tells. Lebuse's Letters won a
variety of impressive awards over the past few years, but has only recently
become publicly available through Linehan's publishing company. It's not
perfect--a bit sluggish at times, occasionally repetitive, and slightly amateurish
in its audio character- izations--but it's precisely the type of work that
transcends the impersonal PC environment by virtue of its human touch.
Lebuse's Letters
Coremax
7831 Woodmont Ave., Ste. 388
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-230-2745
Fax: 301-230-2749
www.coremax.com
Requires: 8MB RAM; 20MB hard drive space. Windows: Pentium
recommended; Sound Blaster-compatible sound card; Windows 3.x or
Windows 95. Mac: 68040 or faster; System 7.x
Direct Price: $39.95
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