Category: News

XR ART & NETWORKING on 25.06.25

Poster manifest:io 2025

Herzliche Einladung zu unserem 6. Jahresevent XR ART & NETWORKING am Mittwoch, 25. Juni 2025, an der HTW Berlin! Dieses Jahr ist es eine gemeinsame Veranstaltung mit dem neuen Immersive Technologies Hub (ITH) an unserer Hochschule.

Freut euch mit uns auf inspirierende Talks, eine offene Fishbowl-Diskussion, XR-Workshops und großartige XR-Projekte an der Schnittstelle von XR-Development, Kunst & Kultur, Gaming – und Journalismus!

Zum vollständigen Programm geht es hier. Um euch zu registrieren, folgt bitte diesem Link.

Our project at MANIFEST:IO festival 2025

Poster manifest:io 2025

Happy to be part of this year’s MANIFEST:IO, the Symposium for New Media and Electronic Art in Berlin! 💫

Our AURORA XR School for Artists is partner of the festival organised and curated by Harshini Karunaratne, Basel Naouri and team – and together with our Artistic Fellows, we will present 2 XR artworks there:

– from hostile to hospitable, with artist Martin Binder: Using augmented reality technology to visualize utopia of friendly urban spaces.

– NOVOCENE, with artist Jens Isensee: Using mixed reality technology to unfold a narrative that explores the Anthropocene, the geological era dominated and shaped by humans, and to reflect on a possible future.

Tickets and further info can be found HERE!

And the fellowship 2025 goes to …

The AURORA XR Fellowship 2024/25 goes to Lisa Kaschubat, Tasha Hess-Neustadt and Jane Arnison with their concept for PHYGITAL INTIMACY!

PHYGITAL INTIMACY (AT) is a speculative vision of the future that combines live performance, mixed reality (MR), gaming and AI with contemporary dance, performance and generative music production.

Performers and the participating audience enter a multiplayer MR environment where they interact with both AI-driven digital content and a generative sound layer. Inspired esp. by Sophie K. Rosa’s concept of radical intimacy – care and community are emphasized as political fields of resistance – the aim is to create connection and intimacy between the users, but also between humans and machines.

A big thank you goes to our expert jury – Pablo Dornhege, Sebastian Keppler and Peggy Schoenegge – and to the many artists and cultural professionals for their submissions to our annual XR Open Call!

Our project at Transferale festival

On 27 September, we are part of the awesome festival Transferale in Berlin to present and discuss »from hostile to hospitable«, the interactive WebAR application for inclusive urban spaces that we developed in close collaboration with the artist Martin Binder! The experience explores discriminatory design in urban public spaces and visualizes (mostly) utopian alternatives.

Transferale is the first transfer and science festival with a focus on climate and health, organised by our HTW Berlin in cooperation with four other universities of applied sciences in Berlin. In over 70 events with more than 150 scientists from different disciplines, you can experience the diversity of applied research.

Link to the event: https://zukunftstadt.berlin/transferale (last access: 25.09.2024).

New Open Access Publications

Contribution by Maja Stark, starting on p. 180.

We are delighted that a contribution from the HERA project with the AURORA XR School for Artists has been published in Atlas der Datenkörper 2 – and another by Dagmar Schürrer in her role as XR artist!

The interdisciplinary anthology is published by Dr Marlene Bart and Johannes Breuer at transcript Verlag and is available Open Access at this link.

»Bodies and Embodiment in Immersive Art« by HERA project coordinator and art historian Maja Stark combines knowledge from computer science and cognitive science with immersive art: It deals with the production and use of digital bodies in immersive art and two types of embodiment – embodied simulation and virtual embodiment – that can unfold in this art and influence our perception.

In »Dreaming is the Mind Left to Itself«, a text by Vanina Saracino is dedicated to the artistic work of the same name by Dagmar Schürrer, which is present in the volume through images, lyrics and augmented reality. Perception and presence here refer to different constructs of reality that can be evoked by XR technologies or dreams, for example.

Contribution by Dagmar Schürrer, starting on p. 224.

XR Art & Networking 2024

Save the date! On June 26, there will be the 5th XR ART & NETWORKING in our EU-funded projects’ series.

The focus lies on three topics and we are very pleased that we could win excellent speakers for two of them:

  • Artistic Research – In this context, Dr. Marlene Bart will give a talk and also present her VR work Theatrum Radix as part of her artistic research.
  • Analogue Haptics – The haptic sense has so far been little integrated into XR experiences. Based on initial ideas, we would like to reflect with you on the possibilities of integrating haptic perception in mixed reality.
  • Autonomous avatars – Interactions with avatars start with verbal communication, but is there more to it? Xenia Klinge and Tanja Simeonovski from DFKI will give a presentation on this topic.

  • We are also planning a 1-hour workshop with our colleagues from DFKI to discuss and brainstorm about autonomous avatars in cultural formats, information booths with artistic XR experiences and, as always, a coffee van by the Spree! 

For the detailed programme, please visit this link. 

You can already register by sending an email to aurora@htw-berlin.de – if you are interested, please also mention your binding registration for the workshop with DFKI (directly after the talks at around 3.15 pm).

And our new fellow is …

Congratulations to our new Artistic Fellow Jens Isensee, who convinced our expert jury with his mixed reality project »Tauchgang« (wt) with Oculus Quest 3! In the interactive installation, he combines digital content with analogue objects made of disposable materials and sends users on a journey into the time after the Anthropocene. We are looking forward to the collaboration!

Website Jens Isensee: https://jensisensee.de/

XR Maker Space

From now on regularly! Every year, we offer two or three one-day XR Maker Spaces for creatives with previous knowledge. The first Maker Space at the end of 2023 was on the development of multiplayer projects in virtual reality, the second one will be on augmented reality in public space!

After each XR Maker Space, there will be an open access video tutorial published on our website, on Youtube and by our cooperation partner nachtkritik.plus.

The next two XR Maker Spaces will take place in autumn 2024!

More info about our Maker Space.