Martina Menegon

Virtual Festival Headquarter

Experience

VIRTUAL FESTIVAL HEADQUARTERS

25.9.–4.10.2020

The Main Hub, which was designed by the architect Wilhelm Scherübl for VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, was both the place of arrival and starting point of the Virtual Festival Headquarters. Closely based on the corporate design of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2020, the space brought together the newcomers to the Virtual Festival Headquarters in surroundings that felt new and yet a little familiar. These virtual headquarters were based on the floor plan of the “real” Festival Headquarters in the Amtshaus Theresienbadgasse and brought together individual objects, such as the Tomb Table from anteup or the M24 table from Klemens Schillinger. 

Those landing in the Main Hub had to arrive, choose an avatar, and take a look around. And then – to pass through one of the many portals into one of the other hubs! 

Space
Wilhelm Scherübl Jr.
scheruebl.me

Avatars 
Area for Virtual Art
areaforvirtual.art

Sounds
Konrad Politanski
politanskisound.com

Grafik 
Buero Nardin
bueronardin.com

Spaces commissioned by VDW: 

Wilhelm Scherübl: The Black Sun Bar

The Black Sun Bar was one of three special spaces that VIENNA DESIGN WEEK commissioned from the architect and designer Wilhelm Scherübl. The experience was inspired by the science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

www.scheruebl.me

iheartblob: Rhubarb & Custard

Rhubarb & Custard played with optical and spatial illusions in their hub in the Virtual Festival Headquarters. The experience sees itself as a new “Teatro Olimpico”, in which the virtual festival visitors could wind their way between meandering paths, shifted perspectives, and colorful textures. In contrast with the usual flat screen-based interactions, the extended reality architecture studio iheartblob offered multiple cinematic sensations within a multi-perspective spatial experience.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CIMOn-usX_M/

Wilhelm Scherübl & Julia Just: A Walk in the Park

“Walk in the Park” was a digital spatial and audio experience that investigated the boundaries and connections between nature and technology. With their virtual walk in the park, Wilhelm Scherübl (space) and Julia Just (audio) invited visitors into a weirdly magical, somehow familiar and yet supernatural world.

www.scheruebl.me
jjust.bandcamp.com

Wilhelm Scherübl: Everything is private here

“Everything is private here,” was a virtual spatial installation that played on an abstract level with the issues of data security and internet privacy. The hub drew visitors into a dark, apparently endless world in which transparent house walls symbolized an ostensible sense of security.

www.scheruebl.me

The Center for Spatial Technologies: networked homes

Opaque walls formed of digital triangles that appear to fragment as one passes through them. The networked homes experience in the Virtual Festival Headquarters played with the ever-present digital integration of living spaces. The Center for Spatial Technologies addressed such optimizations of the domestic infrastructure and interpreted the subject for VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2020 in the form of a digital space, whose plan reflected that of its own office.

Some Place Studio: 36 Questions

In the hub of Some Place Studio Vienna, festival visitors moved between 36 questions that floated through the virtual space, written on geometrical objects. The idea behind the 36 questions was that, by answering them, one could establish interpersonal proximity through experimentation. In the context of pop culture, one speaks of questionnaires that lead to love. Some Place Studio presented the famous questions in such a way that they could be directly experienced or explored by the visitors – alone, in pairs, or in whole groups of avatars.

https://someplace.studio/