Rückblick Places 2023

Places is now more than just a festival

Our programme for the week of digital reality

[Review] Immersive Hackathon 2022

Immersive Hackathon 2022 | Virtual Reality im Planetarium

The cooperation with the Zeiss Planetarium in Bochum goes into the second round.

Places x lala.ruhr @biennial of urban landscape

We already collaborated with lala.ruhr at the last Places _ VR Festival. The network was our guest there with their project "image green urban futures".

The avant-garde of XR research visits Gelsenkirchen

18 university teams from all over Germany made their way to the Places _ VR Festival in mid-September to take part in the DIVR Science Award 2021 with their research project. In the underground car park of the Science Park, students, doctoral students, lecturers and professors presented their VR & AR applications to the jury in order to win one of the awards. The applications ranged from virtual balloon rides and simulations of real haptics in VR to the processing of historical places that no longer exist in VR. This year’s winners come from Berlin, Esslingen and the Ruhr area.

Rethinking the city: lala.ruhr at the Places VR Festival

Imagine Green Urban Futures: This was the motto of lala.ruhr’s programme at the Places VR Festival. The aim was to transport the idea of a greener city in immersive images. Conventional plans and illustrations are difficult for many people to grasp. Extended Reality, on the other hand, makes visions come alive and vivid, as became clear in the programme around Bochumer Straße in Gelsenkirchen.

And the Winner is: Digifactura!

Five startups competed on Thursday 16.09.2021 to win the Places _ Startup Pitch. Digifactura from Bochum was able to prevail over the four other startups. The company, which provides a VR archive service and thus enables VR exhibitions, especially for museums and cultural institutions, convinced the jury with its business model.

Making the web safer – in just 24 hours!

Whether it’s hacker attacks, espionage or security breaches – problems around the topic of IT and data security occupy corporations and start-ups, municipalities and ministries. During the 24 hours of this year’s Places _ VR Hackathon, the focus was precisely on this. How can a more secure IT world be created – and with the help of VR or AR?

Throwback to the Places _ VR Festival 2021!

From 16 to 18 September, Bochumer Straße in Gelsenkirchen presented itself for the third time as a centre for the German and international VR scene. The wide range of applications showed that VR & AR are increasingly finding their way into our everyday lives. Around 6,000 visitors online and on site experienced extended reality applications from a wide range of fields and exciting speakers and online shows:

Saving lives with VR and AR

In an emergency, every second counts – fast workflows are therefore essential. With VR and AR, it is possible to make the training of medical professionals even more efficient with virtual scenarios, with which the technologies can effectively save lives! Traditional psychotherapeutic procedures are also usefully supplemented by VR with new approaches. One thing is clear: XR technologies are making an important contribution to the digitalisation of medicine and will set new standards in the future. At the Places _ VR Festival you can experience the latest developments in the field of digital health live with our programme partners, speakers and participants of the DIVR Science Award!

International VR and AR Art at the Places _ VR Festival

Art and culture have always been an important part of our social coexistence and have constantly evolved, just like people. VR and AR now add a whole new component that opens up new worlds. This means: experiencing interactively, perceiving immersively, discovering new facets of already existing art or creating new exhibition concepts that are only made possible by Extended Reality. At the Places _ VR Festival 2021, you will see applications by international VR and AR artists and cultural workers that bring art and culture to life for you. A special highlight is our location KauVR in an old supermarket on Bochumer Straße, where a top-class art and culture programme is assembled.

Creative use of AR and VR at the Places _ VR Festival

Have you ever had a news reporter standing in your own living room? Or explored a city with your smartphone and brought long-forgotten historical buildings back to life? This is possible with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. These technologies offer a great deal of creative scope that can be put to good use in areas ranging from marketing to tourism. At the Places _ VR Festival 2021, you can experience first-hand what is already possible with our programme partners, speakers and the participants of the DIVR Science Award.

Das Festival von A-Z – F.A.Q.

Arrival The easiest way to get there is by train to Gelsenkirchen main station. You can reach the festival site on foot in about 10 minutes if you leave the main station heading south / exit Bochumer Straße and follow the signs. At the main station you can also take the underground / tram 302 and be in the middle of the festival area in about 5 minutes at the stop Wissenschaftspark or Stephanstraße.

Urban planning & architecture: New possibilities with VR & AR

How can squares, open spaces and buildings be designed sustainably? How does a new building fit into the cityscape and how can communication be optimised during the construction phase? These are questions that architects and urban planners deal with every day. VR and AR open up new, innovative approaches here and allow the fields of architecture and urban planning to enter completely new dimensions. At the Places _ VR Festival you can get to know these possibilities and even discover various future concepts for a green Bochum street in Gelsenkirchen Ückendorf with the “imagine green urban futures” project.

VR and the future of learning

Training electrical and metal technology trainees on a virtual offshore wind turbine or creating your own VR application without much programming: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality offer exciting developments that will take learning and training to a new level in the future. At the Places _ VR Festival, we will bring these possibilities to life for you: our program partners, speakers and the participants of the DIVR Science Award will take you into the world of VR learning.

Playfully immerse yourself in the VR world

Imagine green urban futures: teams for urban planning project have been selected.

For the competition “Imagine green urban futures”,the initiative lala.ruhr and us were looking for planners and designers for innovative urban development. Now the participants have been chosen: the teams of lala.ruhr and the Places_VR Festival are pleased to welcome the agency pimento formate, the landscape architecture firm GREENBOX and the scenographer Anja Cambria Oellermann to Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf.

urbanana-AReal

XR-Events 2021

After many events did not take place at all or only digitally last year, we are looking forward to conferences, expos and meetings around VR, AR and related technologies again in 2021. We have selected a selection of highlight events for you. We will continue to fill out this list and keep you up to date on the form these events will take.

From hackathon to biennale

Eventmovie: Places _ 2020

AR art at Places _ VR Festival

On the occasion of the Places _ VR Festival 202 this year, the urbanana-Areal with five augmented reality artworks was created in the area around Bochumer Straße. The works of art take up already existing street art works, for example graffiti, murals or picture panels in the quarter and expand them in a spectacular way. Using a smartphone app, the real works can be brought to life virtually. Suddenly, artistic 3D animations, videos or pictures complement and superimpose reality.

VR in Bewegung – wie Sport digitaler werden kann

Can Virtual Reality make a real contribution if you want to do sports better, more efficiently or with more fun? We asked ourselves these questions in the run-up to the festival and therefore, together with Schalke hilft! we have put a talk panel on exactly this topic on the festival agenda. Personal trainer & sports influencer Mareike Spaleck, computer science professor Prof. Dr. Jens Gerken and “Schalke hilft!” managing director Sebastian Buntkirchen examined the topic of “Sport and VR” from different angles.

24-hour hacking – for the city of the future

What should the city of the future look like? Somehow digital – probably but also sustainable and worth living in? At this year’s Places _ VR Hackathon, the participants tried to find answers to this question, and they did so using technologies of Extended Reality (VR, AR, MR).

Innovation from the garage

Apple, Google or Amazon – the story of these three tech companies began in a garage. So that’s where the ideas that can change the world are born. That’s why there were real innovations to be discovered at the Places _ VR Festival in the underground car park of the science park.

That was the Places _ VR Festival 2020!

From Experience _ Places to Speakers, Panels, Talks, Workshops, the Creative _ Places Kunst-WG, Hackathon and the DIVR Science Award: From August 20-22, 2020, the Places _ Virtual Reality Festival offered a full program for three days in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf. For the second time after 2018, Bochumer Straße in Gelsenkirchen was the meeting point for the German and European VR industry last weekend, as well as the meeting point for many VR enthusiasts from near and far.

PsyCurio wins the Places _ Startup Pitch

The Festival from A-Z – F.A.Q.

Festival hygiene

Educating parents – inspiring kids

Our Corona timetable – now live

The Places _ Virtual Reality Festival takes place from 20 – 22.08.2020 and will not be postponed again. Together with the responsible persons of the city of Gelsenkirchen we will observe the further development of the pandemic. If the development continues to be positive, as many programme items as possible should take place on site in Gelsenkirchen. It is certain that there will not be any stage and programme points where larger groups would come together at one location as planned. To compensate for this, attractive digital formats will be used.

And the Nominees are…

The first contents at Germany’s largest festival for virtual reality are ready! On 20.05., the first participants of the Places _ Virtual Reality Festival 2020 were presented in a live show on Facebook. Six artists, six start-ups and twenty university teams from all over Germany and neighbouring countries will be present in Gelsenkirchen in various parts of the programme. You can watch the complete show on our Facebook channel or on YouTube.

Places _ Live! – The nomination show & XR Meetup Ruhr

Actually the Places _ VR Festival 2020 would have ended on Saturday. The corona pandemic has put a damper on this. But we are still looking into the future and the new festival date in August! Tomorrow we will announce the participating artists* of the Creative _ Places WG as well as the nominees for the startup pitch and the DIVR Science Award in the live stream starting at 18:30. Together with our partners from DIVR, innogy Stiftung für Energie und Gesellschaft and Wirtschaftsförderung Gelsenkirchen we will announce the nominees and give further updates on the current state of the festival planning. So: Switch on and be there!

A perfect reality check for my prototype!

How Eike Langbehn went from award winner to start-up founder In 2019 Dr. Eike Langbehn won the DIVR Science Award in the category “best concept” with his “SpaceWalk” demo. This year he his startup “Curvature Games” is nominated for the StartUp-Pitch at the Places _ VR Festival. We talked to him and asked him how he experienced the DIVR Science Award and what happened afterwards.

Review DIVR Science Award 2018 & 2019

This year again, the DIVR Science Award will be presented in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf. Together with the German Institute for Virtual Realities, we are looking for university projects that produce real innovation in your research.

Visiting Europes biggest VR event

For 20 years, the “Laval Virtual World” festival has been held in France and has been bringing together experts on the topic of extended reality every year since then. On three days, visitors can experience workshops, presentations, award ceremonies and other program items – but this year everything is different. Travel and big events are not allowed and so the whole event takes place digitally and virtually. Sabrina from our Places _ team has had a look at the whole thing and tells us in an interview what you can experience at a virtual festival.

How we proceed with the Places _ VR Festival

Why did we choose to postpone the Festival instead of making a virtual event and why is a real festival, where we meet in person so important to us. In our latest video message, the head of festival, Matthias and Roman, explain how they lived through the process of the postponement and how we are planning to proceed from now on with the festival. Please activate CC for english subtitles.

Places _ VR Festival 2020 is postponed

The current situation around the Corona pandemic also has an impact on the Places _ VR Festival. In the last few days, we have been thinking a lot about if and how the Places _ VR Festival 2020, or parts of it, can still take place in a, for example, digital form – despite the current situation. But since the personal encounters and the festival character are essential for us, we have decided to postpone the festival to 20 – 22 August.

What can VR do and why actually “Places”?

In the run-up to the festival some of our companions, partners and supporters of the last two years have given their views on VR.

Freigeist at the Places _ Start-Up-Pitch

The Places _ VR Festival in 2020 offers new events in the whole city quarter, in addition to the well-known program parts such as the VR _ Hackathon, the DIVR-Science-Award or the Experience _ Places. One of them is the Start-Up-Pitch on Thursday evening.

The idea of a community driven festival

When we talk to possible partners, sponsors or supporters about the festival, the explanation of what we are actually doing here always starts the same way. For one thing: We are not a fair, the program partners are not exhibitors and the festival site is not an exhibition hall. On the other hand: our event is only as strong as the people who are contributing. You cannot and do not have to buy in. What applies to the program partners also applies to the visitors: the festival is freely accessible.

Understanding clinical depression using VR

What do the approximately 4.5 million people suffering from clinical depression in Germany feel? What do the approximately 10,000 people who take their own lives each year think? With the Virtual Reality experience “Impression Depression”, the Robert Enke Foundation wants to evoke understanding and educate those who not affected. At the Places _ VR Festival, the application can be experienced and the concept behind Impression Depression will be presented.

Kickoff with Lord Mayor & Press

Together with partners of the festival, the City of Gelsenkirchen and the press, we have heralded the festival year 2020. At the kick-off event, Lord Mayor Frank Baranowski was very pleased about the upcoming Places _ Festival: “Gelsenkirchen is a digital model city, and the Places _ Festival is the perfect poster child for us. I am extremely pleased, that the VR industry is meeting in Gelsenkirchen”. We as well are looking forward to the festival, which will start in 2020 with a sharpened profile. Matthias Krentzek, Festival Director of the Places _ VR Festival: “After the initial hype about VR, we want to shed light on which applications in which areas will really make sense in the future and have social relevance. At Places, the industry meets many different people and can test whether and by whom their developments are accepted.