Places 2024 - Review
The fifth Places Festival was the biggest Places Festival ever: Starting on 16 May, seven sub-events spread across the city of Gelsenkirchen showcased the latest in virtual and augmented reality. They offered virtual experiences for a total of ten days. On 25 May, the main day of the festival, all seven locations were open to visitors at the same time. The diverse programme ranged from a virtual journey through European football stadiums to digital solutions for strengthening democracy and a virtual reality opera.
The fact that pioneering technologies and technology trends would once again be part of this year’s Places Festival was made clear by the FeVR Pitches exhibition at its opening on 16 May (Thursday). In St Joseph’s Church in Gelsenkirchen-Schalke, six European football stadiums from the Netherlands to Bosnia were waiting to be discovered with VR glasses. The faithful 3D reproductions were created using Gaussian splatting. This rendering technology makes it possible to create virtual images of real places based solely on image and video material. The FeVR pitches almost became a crowd favourite. The exhibition attracted hundreds of football and technology enthusiasts to St Joseph’s Church. FeVR Pitches was part of the official art and culture programme for UEFA EURO 2024.
The next venue opened its doors on 21 May (Tuesday). The Tech for Good exhibition took visitors into XR worlds that contribute to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals – right in the centre of Gelsenkirchen. In the old Colosseum, an abandoned textile shop, they were able to use VR glasses to explore a virtual coral reef or transform the old shop space into a biotope using AR applications on tablets. At the official opening, entrepreneur Melusine Reimers gave a brief introduction to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and showed how founders can realise them.
One day later (Wednesday), the play Am Ende der Welt by MiR.LAB (Musiktheater im Revier) celebrated its premiere almost directly next door in the Bahnhofcenter as part of the Places Festival. The walk-in sci-fi XR chamber music theatre took the audience into a dystopian future scenario of the year 2032 in 15 performances, each lasting 45 minutes with VR glasses.
On 25 May (Saturday), values were then examined in the context of XR in the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf. The programme item XR for the People of Europe posed the question of how AR and VR can strengthen European values and democracy. Practical answers were provided by the seven applications, which visitors were able to test extensively. Belgian digital artist Laurien Michiels presented her virtual fable “The Room of Resonance”, which deals with the question of how social media shapes our perception of the world. Various talks and discussion panels took place on the stage of the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, providing insights into the latest technologies and trends. The highlight was the final panel talk on Saturday evening. For two hours, experts from the European XR scene and politics discussed how Europe can better position itself as a technology centre and its values in virtual worlds.
Right next door in the mxr lab, visitors were able to experience the works of the Places Residency. They were created by the three international digital artists Kazuki Taguchi, Ines Hilz and Manuel Ribeiro. The three had previously lived in the Kreativ.Quartier Ückendorf for a week as artists in residence. Based on their experiences, they created the applications that linked the virtual and physical realities of the neighbourhood around Bochumer Straße. They presented their artworks to the public as part of the Places Festival.
If you wanted to find out how to work with digital tools yourself, the ℅ Space for Cooperation a few metres away was the place to be. In four workshops, beginners and advanced users had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge in the areas of XR, AI and game design. In the “AR DIY” workshop, Conrad Dreyer from KreativInstitut.OWL showed participants how to create an AR application using open source tools. In the practical part, he was on hand with help and advice.
During the final panel talk, Vienna-based XR entrepreneur Gabriella Chihan Stanley summarised: “There is no point in developing spectacular technologies that only remain spectacular for the creators. It has to reach people’s hearts and offer them added value. And to do this, people must be able to understand technologies.” The Places Festival once again provided this opportunity this year.
Rewatch our panel: XR Together in Europe
Versteinertes Paradies
Manuel Riberio, an architect from Münster with Portuguese roots, took visitors to the Places Festival on a journey through an alternative version of Bochumer Straße in his virtual reality application. He not only created this virtual image of Bochumer Straße using a computer, but also used Gaussian splatting technology to create a 3D version of the district with the help of real video recordings.
The VR version of “Bochumer”, as the locals call it, exudes a Mediterranean flair with its lime-colored houses to the left and right of the roadway, just as the artist knows it from his own homeland and imagines the home of the first generation of immigrants. His artwork was inspired by the highly dynamic nature of the neighborhood, the simultaneous social difficulties and the very diverse composition of the residents.
Where the streetcar tracks normally run, a blue river meanders down the street – users can follow it. On some buildings, they will find interactive elements that actually invite them to play a little game in virtual reality. This gives visitors the opportunity to “pull the street to the left”, so to speak. The backyards move to the street, the facades recede – and fictional scenes can then be explored immersively in VR in the courtyards of Bochumer Straße.
Gewächs aus Gelsen
With her augmented reality artwork “Gewächs aus Gelsen”, which is based on the idea of the Japanese wishing tree, Berline XR designer Ines Hilz has created an interactive artwork for the Places Festival that combines analog and digital elements. She was inspired by the creative will of the people in the district and their simultaneous focus on the future, which she noticed during her visit to the creative quarter in April.
Visitors can actively help shape the digital tree by writing their wishes and ideas for the city of Gelsenkirchen on one of the leaves with a pen – in completely analog form. What is your favorite place? What do you miss in Gelsenkirchen? What do you wish for the future of your city? These and other questions inspire visitors to capture their personal wishes for the future on the sheets of paper on display. The individual leaves are then digitized with a smartphone camera and hung on the digital tree by the artist, which can be admired as a digital sculpture in augmented reality in any room.
With every wish and every idea, the wish tree in AR grows a little more. However, it can not only be seen in AR, but also on its own website. This means that the tree is not only accessible worldwide as a piece of Ückendorf – everyone who has helped to shape the collective work of art can share their wish and all other wishes just as quickly and easily with the whole community.
Unearthing the Tale
The digital artist Kazuki Taguchi, who comes from Japan and lives in Saarland, presented a mapping experiment at the Places Festival in which three visitors each become an individual projector. In terms of content, Kazuki was inspired by the stories of Corpus Christi processions on Bochumer Straße. As with the traditional procession, his artwork entitled “Unearthing the Tale” is about walking a path together, heading in the same direction.
The three visitors have to work together and adjust their respective perspectives to see the entire projection in all its colors. Each of them wears a projector on their head, with which they project the same image – only in different colors – onto the walls. As they turn their heads, the viewing angle of each image changes. The vection effect plays a special role in the installation, enhancing the immersion of what is essentially a simple AR application. It creates the impression that the participants themselves are moving through the Bochumer Straße. In this way, people are on their way together – just as the Corpus Christi procession was many decades ago.
