A collaborative ZKM project with Dagmar Füchtjohann, Stefan Gebhardt, Axel Heide, Bastian Hemminger, Herwig Hoffmann, Felix Kratzer, Torrid Luna, tx_Oh, Philip Pocock, Linus Stolz, Udo Walker und Peter Weibel

With ZKM_YOUniverse the ZKM presents its Dependence in Second Life, an outlook for the digital museum of the future. With extended 3D, Web 2.0 as well as mobile platforms, the aim is to provide users everywhere with an extended discursive virtual environment which clarifies in advance, the role of the “active visitor” to the museum. Unlike the conventional representative forms in Second Life, the ZKM Universe does not function as a three-dimensional mirror image of the physical ZKM in the “first world“: the analysis of current questions relating to art, media and technology which are posed by the ZKM think factory both in theory and practice are made accessible to the “prosumer (pro-ducer, con-sumer) beyond regional borders and can be designed by them. The particular media architecture of the ZKM satellites provide space for participative media events, trans-local E-learning as well access to contents from audio-visual archives of the ZKM and its partners worldwide. The user can introduce pictures into the symbolic universe of the ZKM either directly into Second Life or via mobile telephones on site at the ZKM, from which a data stream for the various project’s platforms can be generated. With their avatars, Second Life users can also participate “in world”.

(Text: Petra Kaiser / ZKM)