Digital Art

Simone Glück & Svenja Jessen

For the permanent exhibition of the Textilfabrik Cromford (Textile Mill), designer Simone Glück created the interface for an interactive media wall. The central theme is cotton as a raw material. In an associative arrangement, ten chapters with short texts by author Svenja Jessen provide information about the historical and current contexts surrounding the cotton and textile industry.
With the media wall, the museum focuses on the global embedding of the textile mill in the international cotton trade of the 18th century. In addition to learning about the plant, visitors can also learn about the interrelationships between cultivation, processing, working conditions, environmental pollution and climate change.

Textilfabrik Cromford (Textile Mill), Ratingen

Anita Augustin, Tim Berresheim & Tobias Raschbacher

The story-based augmented reality tour invites visitors on an interactive discovery tour and playful exploration of future-oriented topics. At the St. Antony Hut, the focus is on algae, urban mining and urban gardening. At the Tuchfabrik Müller in Euskirchen, the focus is on unusual fibers, fabrics and textiles. With the AR-Parcours you explore the grounds of the industrial museums virtually as well as analogue and learn to think about the future of building, the city, material research and energy production.

St. Antony-Hütte (Ironworks), Oberhausen

Tuchfabrik Müller (Cloth Factory), Euskirchen

Nadine Kolodziey

Artist Nadine Kolodziey developed a virtual tour with five augmented reality stations for the Gesenkschmiede Hendrichs (Drop Forge) in Solingen. Starting from an archway in the atrium of the Gesenkschmiede Hendrichs, Novum opens the view into a parallel digital world. Using a mobile device, this AR landscape, which lies virtually over the old factory, can be explored playfully and interactively. The work focuses in particular on the question of how digital narratives change our perception of temporality. While time seems to have stood still in the drop forge, the digital objects change with the cycle of the four seasons and span an arc from the past into the future.

Gesenkschmiede Hendrichs (Drop Forge), Solingen

Cris Wiegandt

Is the use of wood for paper production still justifiable in view of climate change? And where to put all the plastic waste? Based on these questions, the artist Cris Wiegandt has developed a spatial installation with a hypothetical approach to the subject of cellulose. At the center of a "what if" scenario is a fictional composter in which bacteria transform plastic waste into new kinds of cellulose, from which paper products are created. Cris Wiegandt's humorous approach to technological scenarios is less determined by functionalist criteria of usability, but rather draws attention to current ecological grievances.

Papiermühle Alte Dombach (Paper Mill), Bergisch Gladbach

Mischa Kuball

With the light and sound installation future_grid, Düsseldorf conceptual artist Mischa Kuball stages selected fragments of large industrial machines. After dark, white light grids are projected onto the discarded artifacts. They mark a free space that opens associative references to the past, present and future. Music pieces composed especially for the objects by SONAE, XAMBUCA and Gudrun Gut invite visitors to dive into this post-industrial landscape with all their senses and to trace the ideas of the future of a generation of young people.
In cooperation with the LVR Christoph Schlingensief School in Oberhausen, fictional stories have been created in which students enter into a dialogue with the machines and their history.

Peter-Behrens-Bau, Oberhausen

Cristina Tarquini

In the interactive video and sound installation Shapeshifting Energy, Italian designer Cristina Tarquini explores the effects of man-made global warming and raises awareness of the delicate balance of the water cycle. An interactive interface allows users to virtually manipulate rain, snow, or cloud formation. In the course of the interaction, users experience restrictions on their decision-making options, triggered by increasing droughts and floods, a decreasing drinking water level or additional heat development. The point-cloud animations, which are constantly regenerated and projected into the space, are supported by a soundscape by sound artist Antoine Bertin.

Kraftwerk Ermen & Engels (Power Plant), Engelskirchen