T+T transferNet: Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall. Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

T+T transferNet: Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall. Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

 

Perchance, at long last, there may be a market for a video game that is, about escaping from the iron curtain, the Long Way Back 2010 a movie produced by the Polish Film institute about a heroic long walk, undertaken by a handful of escapees, out of a Gulag in northern Siberia, could be an indicator for popular demand for such a gaming experience. The Artist Team T+T transferNet, whose key figures are, Tamiko Theil and Thereasa Reuter, have made, a three dimensional world of where the Berlin Wall was, in a cloyingly small, section between, Kreuzberg and Mitte, where the death strip and east wall and west wall was. One hopes for a more complete version, of the project, one day placed in a National Historical Museum, in Germany.

 

The art work, as a virtual reality art work, has many merits, being that it seeks to provide people of today, who know how to maneuver a joy stick on a video game console, the experience of walking through East Berlin, near Heinrich Heine Platz yet as an artwork on public view, Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall, is unfortunately buggy. 

 

The key concept, of a Berlin then, or a walking tour around the borders of Warsaw pact nations with out the proper documentation to leave, the bloc, is great, I for one, hope that it could be a video game, one day, with similar memorial and pedagogical portent as Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall takes to task.

 

The location of the virtual reality world that was sadly an all to recent reality for many living in East Berlin, is situated in the places where today's children walking about in Berlin can pass un-hampered, that it makes apparent what, part of the experience it was to be in a city, occupied by the peoples army of the German Democratic Republic, despite the current state of the project, it nevertheless induces a powerful feeling of empathy for those people who were living in East Berlin who were told at one time or another, when they got close to the wall, I paraphrase, the historically accurate script of the VR east German Border trooper, "No, with those Papers, you cannot cross the border, please leave the protective zone peaceably or else…".

 

I learned something, and had a laugh of relief, maneuvering about in this virtual Berlin wall reconstruction.   By craniv boyd.