More than 3000 visitors, the latest extended reality applications at 30 experience stations, lectures and panel talks by and with 100 active co-creators: The Places Festival entered its fourth round on 5 and 6 May and transformed Bochumer Straße into the #1 meeting place for the XR scene. This year, the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche was a new location that was all about VR, AR, metaverse and networking.

“Extended reality technologies have now reached the centre of society.” With these words, Lord Mayor Karin Welge aptly summarised the rapid development of XR technology in her opening speech at the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche on Thursday. Just like the technology, the Places Festival has also evolved and made it clear in four large locations that XR technologies offer tangible added value for our society.

The winners of the Hackathon in Residence were also announced on Thursday as part of the opening event. In the run-up to the festival, the participants spent four days working on the question of what solutions augmented reality offers for sustainable retail. The result was four innovative AR applications that were tried out and tested by visitors in shop windows along Bochumer Straße on Friday and Saturday. The hackathon was won by “lookARound”. The team developed a mobile game in which users can win discounts for shops in the neighbourhood.