Project Description

1999

Website

“Hyperl@u.de” is a set of websites and a video – “Rekult” – for a hypothetical lifestyle and tourism campaign that seeks and offers solutions to overcome the region’s struggles. They are a proposal for a new perception of the Lausitz’ landscape with the aid of the world wide web.

The concept is that the websites offer digital layers of interactive computer games or other game-like activities that cover and link the local physical sites with the global virtual reality. The virtual-reality-computer games can be played online by the but their effects happen (hypothetically) in reality, e.g. trees are planted, water fountains splashed or heaps of sand are moved. The idea is to blur boundaries of spaces between analogue/digital and real/virtual.

“Hyperl@u.de” is entertainment architecture. It provides transformation possibilities and a symbiosis of a landscape/place with a (better) virtual landscape. “HyperL@au.de” is a playful interface of a local network (the damaged landscape) linked with the global net that helps to repair the region’s image or at least offers new ways of perception and story lines.

1st Prize in the interantional student competition Die Neuen Medien – Der Raum und die Grenzen. Perspektiven für die Niederlausitz by the cultural association of the German Industry (Kulturkreis im BDI e.v.), presented at BTU Cottbus in June 1999