Three Winters in the Sun: Einstein in California (Book & DVD-ROM)

"Three Winters in the Sun presents a multi-perspective portrait of Albert Einstein and his times. Although this portrait focuses on the three winter terms that he spent as a research associate at Caltech (1931, 1932 and 1933), it uses this turning point as a lens to re-envision his entire life. For, this was the crucial period when Hitler came to power, when Einstein and his wife were forced to abandon their home in Germany and resettle permanently in the United States, when Einstein reconsidered his position on pacifism and his identity as an emigre and as a Jew, when the FBI opened a file that eventually grew to nearly 1,500 pages and began closely monitoring his political activities, when Einstein's celebrity reached a new level of mega-stardom that he could leverage on behalf of political causes, and when Einstein dedicated his scientific work to the quest for a unified field theory which seemed a failure in his own lifetime but later inspired some of today's hottest research developments in physics. ""Instead of trying to present a single definitive view of Einstein, our portrait emphasizes the many contradictions he evoked as a cultural icon. It destabilizes any simplistic vision of the man,"" says writer/producer Marsha Kinder. ""We look at him through six distinct lenses, each focusing on his relations with a different community with which he interacted in Southern California: his own Household, Jews, Emigres, Science, Hollywood, and the FBI. Each lens enables you to explore a stream of narrative particles-brief episodes that reveal a different dimension of Einstein's life."" ""We came up with a design that was inspired by Einstein's theory of relativity and that enables people to engage with-a-variety of interwoven narratives,"" observes director Kristy H.A. Kang. ""Streams of particles traveling through the cosmos, our interface evokes Einstein's expansive radiation, which literally reaches out into the universe and shapes how we perceive it."" That is how the structure is described by interface designer Andreas Kratky. While navigating through these streaming particles, users can create their own video and audio collage out of a rich array of archival materials--photographs, film clips, newspaper and magazine articles, radio broadcasts, oral histories, personal letters, entries from Einstein's unpublished diary, official documents, and textual quotes by Einstein and his biographers. The DVD-ROM also includes original animations and artwork and sixteen new interviews produced exclusively for this project."Marsha Kinder is the author of 'Three Winters in the Sun: Einstein in California (Book & DVD-ROM)', published 2005 under ISBN 9780967412764 and ISBN 0967412765.