The Portal – Entrance
The portal combines the iconic design elements of the entrance area with audio-reactive visuals, creating a bridge between the outside world and the exhibition. It welcomes visitors with an immersive atmosphere, visually preparing them for the experience inside.
Our visuals are based on natural forms and textures, which we merge with the aesthetic motifs of the interior installations. They react dynamically to the club’s music—their colors, movements, and intensity change according to the character of the sound—creating a vivid, audiovisual experience.
Sara Milic, Keting Liu und Berivan Altunsaray
[theBar.]
Our idea was to give each drink at the bar its very own style. Each drink should have an individual character and distinctive visual features that place it within a specific era of techno history over the past 50 years. The ordering process should be accompanied by matching animations that abstractly and uniquely represent the preparation of the drink. It was important to us to not only visually distinguish the drinks from each other, but also to use the different properties of so-called fluids. We hoped this would create a certain level of immersion for visitors. Our goal was to reimagine the act of mixing drinks. Through animated visuals and sounds, the moment at the bar should become a unique interplay of technology, aesthetics, and enjoyment.
Our shared interest in generative AI and the latest trends in this field formed the foundation for our project focus. During our research, we came across StreamDiffusion, a real-time diffusion pipeline developed for interactive image generation. This model allows generative AIs to create images in real time. The goal of our project was to harness the creative potential of hallucinatory AI models by using targeted prompts to generate various types of fluids and design their animations experimentally. Through custom-designed image contexts—specifically developed drink visuals and tailored prompts—we aimed to create visually unique and extraordinary animations. And all of this in real time, individually for each visitor, making every experience unique. We saw this as an opportunity to use cutting-edge developments in generative AI and integrate them into the context of a modern rave in an unconventional way.
For our AI model to generate animations based on prompts, we needed base images for it to hallucinate from. Each drink gets its own logo and corresponding font—five different drink visuals were created in total. Each of the five drinks represents its respective era, which we want to make visually tangible in our showcase. It was important to us that the animations appear high-quality and unique. For this reason, we placed great emphasis on creating especially unique and aesthetically appealing drink visuals using Photoshop. Finally, we should mention our frame: It forms the border within which our visuals are generated. It features a rotating text of the event name and is permanently visible.
Léon Repp, Till Müller
Dancebyte – A Journey Through the History of Techno
Our five-person team worked on the interactive LED-panel dance floor—lovingly called “Dancebyte”—which brings the evolution of techno culture across five decades to life, from the 1970s to the 2010s/2020s. Each decade is represented by its own visual animation, capturing the spirit, aesthetics, and characteristic style of the time.
Each team member took on the creative and technical implementation of one era. The goal was to reflect the cultural shifts, fashion trends, and design sensibilities of each decade on the dance floor using colors, shapes, and movements.
1970s: Inspired by lava lamp designs with flowing, psychedelic shapes.
1980s: Characterized by brutalism—with angular structures, black-and-white contrasts, and graffiti flair.
1990s: Dominated by neon colors, “acid” rave aesthetics, and iconic smiley faces.
2000s: A digital, futuristic atmosphere in the style of The Matrix, with green-blue-black elements.
2010s/2020s: Laser-inspired effects and colorful acid light-show aesthetics take center stage.
The result is a visual archive of techno culture that unfolds in sync with the music, allowing visitors to literally dance through the decades.
Kadir Yilmaz, Emma Brugger, Jules Robles, Mario Schuster, Shermineh Shasti
Interactive DJ Booth
The DJ booth is one of the most important yet most inaccessible places at any rave. Usually, only the world’s best DJs get behind the decks. With us, it’s different: Here, anyone can be the DJ. Not only does our specially developed software automatically correct mistakes, but the visuals—projected on screens, spotlights, and an LED wall—are faithful to the era of the song currently playing and react in real time. Other installations in the exhibition also respond to the beat and the era of the music being played here. Because the process of DJing has been greatly simplified, anyone—regardless of prior experience—can feel what it’s like to set the tempo in the club. Literally.
Joshua Bohnhorst, Oliver Dick, Ewgenia Sterleadova, Sarah Wolff Neculicioiu, Pit Daetz, Nils Weinandy, Andreas-Antonio Iancu
Klonversations
The club toilet (specifically—the stall) is more than just a functional stop—it serves as a safe space, a melting pot of different situations, encounters, and conversations. Here, moments of honesty, relief, solidarity, and sometimes unexpected openness occur. That’s the feeling we wanted to capture.
Content-wise, we focused on central themes closely linked to club life and techno culture: consent and mindful, respectful interaction with others, substance use with an emphasis on safer use and risk awareness, the role of FLINTA* people in the club context (from community and solidarity to experiences of discrimination), as well as questions of safety when partying, including the necessary awareness approach. These aspects are complemented by a look at the history of techno and its origins, with a special focus on the Düsseldorf scene.
Our goal was to create an authentic “next-stall” feeling: the intimate, familiar setting where you hear voices, catch fragments of conversations, and for a moment feel close to the people on the other side of the wall.
We chose staged encounters, which we filmed and color-graded to match the other installations. Black-and-white interludes separate the eight different scenarios. On a large screen, and with a sheer curtain acting as a divider between scenes, visitors experience intimate glimpses while maintaining a sense of distance—just like in a real club toilet, being the neighbor in the next stall.
Katharina Koch, Amelie Wehr, Marie Friedeheim
Kinetic Tubes
KINETIC TUBES is an installation that makes movement visible and redefines space through light. The work combines clean forms with atmospheric depth and invites visitors to become part of the installation themselves.
At its core is an arrangement of vertical LED tubes set up in multiple layers. This spatial offset creates a three-dimensional image impression that goes beyond a flat surface. The tubes are not just light carriers—they form a sculptural surface through their arrangement. Their transparency creates spatial depth and anchors the digital image in the physical space.
The installation responds to the position of the viewers, translating their silhouettes into abstract light patterns. The body becomes an abstract projection surface, recognizable in rough movement and form. The low resolution creates a special charm: the representation remains abstract, leaving room for interpretation and focusing on movement and form.
Aesthetically, KINETIC TUBES draws inspiration from the design language of various musical decades. Each era brings its own color and form vocabulary, which is reflected and interpreted in the installation. The light patterns are stylized and adapted to the low resolution of the screen.
The focus is not on technology but on effect: How does spatial perception change when light reacts to movement? How does it feel to become part of an image? Every interaction changes the display, making the experience individual and alive. KINETIC TUBES is an invitation to interact—growing with the audience’s presence and constantly reshaping itself.
Steffen Herweg, Noah Kyeong-Seo Ban, Carianne Sauermann
KLOMPLIMENTOMAT
The club toilet (specifically—the stall) is more than just a functional stop—it serves as a safe space, a melting pot of different situations, encounters, and conversations. Here, moments of honesty, relief, solidarity, and sometimes unexpected openness occur. That’s the feeling we wanted to capture.
Content-wise, we focused on central themes closely linked to club life and techno culture: consent and mindful, respectful interaction with others, substance use with an emphasis on safer use and risk awareness, the role of FLINTA* people in the club context (from community and solidarity to experiences of discrimination), as well as questions of safety when partying, including the necessary awareness approach. These aspects are complemented by a look at the history of techno and its origins, with a special focus on the Düsseldorf scene.
Our goal was to create an authentic “next-stall” feeling: the intimate, familiar setting where you hear voices, catch fragments of conversations, and for a moment feel close to the people on the other side of the wall.
We chose staged encounters, which we filmed and color-graded to match the other installations. Black-and-white interludes separate the eight different scenarios. On a large screen, and with a sheer curtain acting as a divider between scenes, visitors experience intimate glimpses while maintaining a sense of distance—just like in a real club toilet, being the neighbor in the next stall.
Katharina Koch, Amelie Wehr
My Eyes
You’re at a party. Maybe you’ve had one or two beers more than you should have—and three or four more than you planned at the start of the evening. The mood is good, and even though you already regret the hangover that’s coming tomorrow, it was worth it.
Even if you don’t want to leave the action, you eventually have to hit the bathroom. You make your way through the crowd, away from the music. When you reach the toilets, it’s suddenly much quieter—and in the stall itself, you only hear (or feel) the bass.
In this brief moment of silence, the mood changes. It’s calmer, you’re alone, and you have—maybe unintentionally—a short moment to think. As you wash your hands, you glance in the mirror. And you look yourself in the eyes.
Your own eyes in the mirror often feel strangely unfamiliar. Logically, you know you’re looking at yourself, but the person in the mirror still feels foreign somehow. And whether you find that person sympathetic is something only you can decide. This moment of eye contact carries a very specific intimacy, which I tried to recreate with my installation.
It’s implemented with a webcam that tracks your face. This is translated into x and y coordinates for the eyes, which then follow you. The eyes themselves are 2D but placed on a plane in 3D space. So not only do the eyes follow you—the entire face tilts in your direction.
Marie Friedeheim