How can physical and digital communities work together to create immersive art installations and bring them to life in order to draw attention to socially relevant issues? This question is addressed by the NEXT.IN.NRW project “flowAR: Blossoming collective creativity in physically and digitally active communities through the creation of immersive augmented reality objects,” which is funded by the EFRE/JTF program NRW 2021-2027 and the European Union.
The project explores how immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) can redesign collaborative art installations in a nature-oriented context. At its heart is a user-centered AR authoring tool that enables even laypeople to make their own creative contributions to immersive art installations.
The goal is to create new forms of participatory art in public spaces—low-threshold, inclusive, and ecologically sensitive. flowAR takes a user-centered approach and investigates the conditions under which digital and physical communities participate in co-creative processes, what motivates them to remain engaged in the long term, and how these processes can be meaningfully supported by digital tools.
The interdisciplinary consortium of scientists and practitioners consists of six project partners. Our chair is leading the consortium for this research project. The funded project partners are the Interactive Systems Chair at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Prof. Prilla), Northdochs GmbH, Digital Culture as part of the City of Dortmund, IGA Metropole Ruhr 2027 gGmbH, and TNL GmbH.
The project will run for 36 months from June 1, 2025, to May 31, 2028.
We are very much looking forward to an exciting and, above all, creative next three years.