»Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall« 
Light Box
Light Box
© T+T (Tamiko Thiel & Teresa Reuter), 2008
Keywords
Information
Tamiko Thiel >
»Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall«, 2008
Co-Workers & Funding:
T+T (Tamiko Thiel and Teresa Reuter), 2008. The project was developed in close cooperation and with the support of the Berlin Senate Chancellary for Cultural Affairs as an integral part of its Memorial Concept for the Berlin Wall. In 2009 it won the Grand Prize of the IBM Innovation Awards at the Boston Cyberarts Festival.Further partners, supporters and sponsors of the project include: Primary financial sponsor Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital City Cultural Fund of Berlin), Berlin Wall Documentation Center, Museum for Communication in Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany State Department, Goethe-Institut Boston, Dr. John Czaplicka, PhD – Harvard University Center for European Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Center for Advanced Visual Studies, metroGap e.V. – Association for Urban Theory and Practice, Bitmanagement Systems and JSC Softline/Ukraine.
http://www.virtuelle-mauer-berlin.de/
Technology
Display
5m wide x 3m high front projection screenHardware
Windows XP or 7 PC, custom modified joystick and tripod, stereo loudspeakersSoftware
Bitmanagement Software 3D VRML browser
Descriptions & Essays
Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall is a virtual reality (VR) artwork, an interactive 3D computer graphic installation that enables users to experience a section of the Berlin Wall in its former complexity. A digital reconstruction of a kilometer of the dismantled Berlin Wall and its surrounding neighborhoods creates a space of rememberance that users can explore in order to to experience and reflect on this historical time, and enables this now vanished structure to speak of the emotions and conflicts it engendered and represented in the past. As in a 3D computer game, users can wander along the Wall – not in the role of the omnipotent border guard, gun in hand, but in the role of a normal Berlin resident who must live day in and day out with the presence of the Wall.
The Berlin Wall divided West and East Berlin during the Cold War from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989. Our project area, between the West Berlin district Kreuzberg and the East Berlin district Mitte, stretches from the former border crossing at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse to the Engelbecken Park. We researched the historical, sociological and urban conditions, and interviewed people who lived in our project area during the time of the Wall, in order to understand how the Wall's presence and the constant possibility of escape attempts influenced everyday life for residents. This formed the basis for our interactive 3D installation, in which we utilize dramatic techniques of virtual reality such as simulation, animation, interaction and time travel to bring this history to life.
The interactive 3D installation is set primarily in the mid-1980s, but in certain locations we travel back to the 1960s or forward into the present time. You, as the user of the 3D installation, navigating through the virtual world with a simple joystick, trigger these time travels through your own movements and choices, weaving your own particular web of everyday stories and historical events from the time of the Wall. You are the protagonist - in the role of a normal resident who has to live with the Wall. Are you in East Berlin or West Berlin? Your own actions decide where you are - just as they would have on the day the Wall was built.
http://www.architekturclips.de/de/playing/berliner_mauer/
Literature
Redaktion. »Virtuelle Mauer - ein Kunstprojekt.« ecke köpenicker 0, no. 7 (November 2014): 1.
Thiel, Tamiko and Teresa Reuter. »Rhetorics of the Interactive 3D Installation ‘Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall’.« In Conference Proceedings for International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS 2010), edited by Ruth Aylett, 129-140. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 2010.
Exhibitions & Events