Stretching into Virtuality - Matters of Activity

Visitors on the elevator platform with the cloud above them, selecting new levels to lift to. Copyright: Matters of Activity

In Matters of Activity, researchers from numerous disciplines address the question of what material is, how we view material, deal with it, and last but not least, how we as human actors can enter into a dialogue with the actor material. The module »Stretching into Virtuality« of the exhibition Stretching Materialities tries to translate these questions into a virtual experience space that has never existed before. Virtuality is understood as a material of its own kind, woven from the structures of the digital, translated into sensory perceptibility, and built from connected layers of hardware and software. The virtual is conceived not so much as an addendum, as so often happens in museum contexts, but rather as an integral layer of the entire exhibition that overlays other exhibits, shimmies along them, and thus creates points of contact, extensions, perspectives, and interfaces.

A system was created with mobile virtual reality headsets visitors can take with them and put on. The circular space of the rotunda of the Tieranatomisches Theater was virtually modeled and superimposed on the physical space. In order to enable exact alignment, special laser pointers were mounted on the VR headsets in a proprietary design that enables calibration of the virtual space. This creates a double space: the walk through the physical exhibition always carries a virtual layer with it, the change between the levels is part of the exhibition visit. This innovative setting is unique for museum operations and enables a completely different, spatial immersion in the exhibition space. Walls and objects visible in the virtual can not only be seen but also touched and felt - because where there is a virtual column, for example, there is a physical one behind it.

The central design idea of the virtual levels is a historical perspective: in the center of the rotunda, there was a historical elevator in the 18th and 19th centuries that brought horse cadavers from the dissection rooms up to the Anatomical Theater to demonstrate them to an expert audience. This elevator, which was reconstructed as part of the renovation work, will be usable again in the virtual one. Thus, a platform was built in the center of the exhibition space that can be walked on and represents the step into the elevator. By pressing the virtual switch, the elevator is set in motion - made perceptible by vibrator motors mounted underneath. Depending on the floor selected, however, the visitor:in not only enters the theater space that is also physically above but also one of six floors, each of which makes the activity of material visible in its own way. The six floors are:

At the start, an image of the rotunda itself, with the possibility of finding, feeling and walking on objects of the exhibition space, such as the rattan weave.
A level of the theater space above, with six giant floating objects representing the research themes of Active Matter of the Cluster of Excellence.
A level of weathering, in which huge stones show their processes of change over centuries in seconds and make it possible to experience them
A CT scan of a stone that is also part of the exhibition. Reduced to a microscale, visitors:in find themselves inside the stone, whose cavities thus appear like a giant cave landscape.
An interactive tactile dimension, in which the touching and changing of large abstract objects is tactilely transmitted to the visitors by means of vibration motors.
A dimension inside the cloud hovering above the elevator platform, scaled down to the smallest size, the visitor:in experiences cloud particles and structures that create clouds

In the exploration and experience of these dimensions, in the initially still groping and uncertain exploration of the virtual, the activity of matter gradually becomes an experiential space: a space that gives less answers than triggers questions, shows instead of explaining and invites discussion, reflection and wonder. In the spirit of an exhibition of process, where dialogue is the goal rather than explanation, the installation has been modified and expanded during the exhibition period and retains its structural extensibility into student projects, other research and a (planned) relocation of the exhibition to Buenos Aires.

Christian Stein