"Karlsruhe Maptory" – A Digital Enactment in the City

The app "Karlsruhe Maptory – A digital Enactment in the City" guides its users through the inner city of Karlsruhe on the trail of important figures in the city’s history. More than 30 locations, stories or musical events connected with Karlsruhe scholars, scientists, and artists are staged and overlap with reality. Via augmented reality (AR) technology users experience these events on a mobile end device.

App users use a digital map for orientation in the city. In selected places they can delve into the stories via special AR markers. There are dramatic productions and music pieces, and users learn about intriguing stories and the backgrounds of the historic figures featured. Building facades transform into interactive spaces for painting and play, and posters turn into cinema screens. Scholars, scientists, and artists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who where living and working in Karlsruhe come to life: on the virtual city tour one encounters Ferdinand Braun, the inventor of the Braun tube (cathode ray tube), the architect Hermann Billing, who together with the sculptor Hermann Binz designed the “scandalous fountain” on the Stephansplatz, Fritz Haber, who developed the first method of synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen for which he received the Nobel Prize for chemistry, but his discovery also advanced the use of toxic gas as weapon of mass destruction.

With this app, the ZKM seeks to connect various genres of the visual and performance arts in an entertaining and informative way, and to transform the city into a digital stage. Scenes performed by actors and digital montages alternate with animations or purely acoustic works.

»Karlsruhe Maptory« can be downloaded online for free from the Apple App Store and played on a private iPad or iPhone. You can also get a Tablet (to be booked) at the Loans Station at the ZKM.

Institutions involved:
ZKM | Institute for Visual Media, Karlsruhe, DE
ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics, Karlsruhe, DE
Baden State Theatre Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, DE
SWR2 radio play studio, Baden-Baden, DE

Donor of third-party funds:
Society for the Promotion of Art and Media Technology
Culture - European Commission

Production staff:
Idea: Bernd Lintermann
Concept: Bernd Lintermann, Florian Hertweck, Ludger Brümmer, Eva Lusch Dramaturgy and direction: Florian Hertweck
Composition: Ludger Brümmer, Luca Magni
Augmented Reality: Bernd Lintermann
Sound Design: Holger Stenschke
Actors: Jan Andreesen, Jonathan Bruckmeier, Annette Büschelberger, Roland Funke, Florian Hertweck, Thomas Halle, Joanna Kitzl, Sophia Löffler, Antonia Mohr, Luis Quintana, Eva-Maria Rabsch-Hertweck, Gunnar Schmidt, Johannes Schumacher, Andre Wagner, Ralf Wegner
Choreography and dance: Annegret Schalke
Radio play Text: Holger Jost
Speakers: Isabelle Demey, Isaac Dentler, Manuel Harder, Catharina Kottmeier, Matti Krause, Vincent Leittersdorf, Johannes Wördemann
Radio play direction: Frank Halbig
Project management: Bernd Lintermann, Andrea Buddensieg, Sabiha Keyif
Research: Eva Lusch, Holger Jost
App development: Bernd Lintermann, Johannes Degenhard
Development Webpage: John swordhard
Graphic design: Renata Sas
Production Management Video: Jan Gerigk
Video technology and production: Christina Zartmann, Moritz Büchner, Sarah Binder, Jonas Denzel, Martina Rotzal
Organizational support: Silke Sutter
Technical support: Manfred Hauffen, Martin Häberle
Curated by: Peter Weibel