The meter-high waves crash onto Dr.-Ruer-Platz, a massive spacecraft that lands next to the plaza or a life-size whale swims across the plaza. To be seen in a digital virtual box 6 x 20 meters. Especially artworks, Bochum can make a name for itself as a city of immersive arts. City designers Dr.-Ruer-Platz website proposal as a site.
The primary activity of the Bochum strategy is the promotion of immersive art. Therefore, the city wants to hold a “festival of immersive arts” (Brief description of the fifty core activities of the Bochum Strategy). In this artistic movement, digital images, which are often lifelike, are used to create a virtual reality that makes the viewer believe that it is part of a new virtual world. So far, high-volume expectations of virtual reality in Bochum have only been possible in the planetarium. Using display technology, newly installed in 2020, moving visual artworks can be cast on the planetarium’s ceiling, as the visitor believes they have traveled into virtual reality.
Virtual-Reality-Box am Dr.-Ruer-Platz
City designers A proposal to create a second important place for immersive art in Bochum. The idea predicts the installation of a hypothetical 6 x 20 m box in Dr.-Ruer-Platz. The new building, which will replace the previous Uhle restaurant, will be particularly suitable for this purpose. The 3D virtual box can be created by two big screens in the head and long side of the new building, then it can be clearly seen from both the square and the Huestrasse. The two huge screens create the illusion of a room that can be filled with immersive artwork of all kinds.
Virtual reality in the box
Role model in Seoul
The default box model is a very similar installation in Seoul. In the capital of South Korea, you can see the possibilities that such a box offers. Here are some examples of facts already shown in the box:
Life-size whale swimming in a box:
The box becomes the landing site of a huge spaceship:
A meter high waves crash through the box:
Art show of larger-than-life people navigating the box:
Among other things, a colorful spring meadow in a clearing forest:
A unique attraction of Bochum
Immersion is the art of making unimaginable illusions real. The immersive artwork thus breaks the boundaries of what previously could be imagined. By default, the box makes it possible to display landscapes in large format in the city center. Likewise can
Create and present virtual illusions that no one has seen before. It would also be envisioned that the Schauspielhaus or Bochum Symphony Orchestra would perform in the box.
The fund will enrich the city with a unique attraction that has not yet been seen in Germany, if not all over Europe. Virtual artworks will attract people to Bochum City Center, which at the same time also represents new potential customers for the city’s restaurants and stores that the city center has consistently lost over the past decades due to visual randomness.
The Virtual Reality Box brings new art to Bochum and thus reinforces the city’s reputation as a changing and modern digital city in the Ruhr region. A new hotspot in this city could contribute greatly to revitalizing the inner city.
Finance and operation
The profit shown is on the one hand, and on the other hand the fund and scaling must be sustainably funded. Funding can be anchored on three pillars. In addition to partial public funding from the cultural budget in addition to cultural funding from the state, the federal government and the European Union, advertising can be funded. On the one hand, default advertising projections can be displayed in the box, and on the other hand, companies must be able to sponsor technical projections. As part of the sponsorship, the corresponding companies should then be offered as sponsors, and co-financing should be sought by businessmen and restaurants in the city center, who will benefit the most from the visitors the fund should attract.
Bochum Marketing can handle the operation and marketing of the fund, and the virtual business manufacturing process can be supported by the planetarium. Additionally, the city can create a funding pool for immersive art and support artists in applying for funding from the state, the federal government, and the European Union for digital art. The immersive art festival planned by the city as part of Bochum’s strategy could have gained a fabulous new place with the virtual box on Dr.-Ruer-Platz (Brief description of the fifty core activities of the Bochum Strategy). In this way, the prerequisite is created to make the festival known outside of Bochum’s borders.
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