Why you should visit the ZKM Karlsruhe

You don’t often see museums like this. The Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Center for Art and Media Technology), or ZKM Karlsruhe, is a place where art meets technology. The single building is home to one media center, two museums and three research institutes. That’s what I call an efficient use of space!

What’s special about the ZKM Karlsruhe?

These museums are groundbreaking and fascinating. The Media Museum is the first and only museum in the world for interactive art. You can find a game of SMS Pong in the Gameplay permanent exhibition. That’s where four cell phones, attached to a podium, play Pong by communicating through text message. The exhibition takes up an entire floor. It is devoted to the use of art through electronic games. Or you can check out global aCtIVISm from now until the end of March. That exhibit is focusing on demonstrations and performances which bring attention to bad situations.

33 Questions Per Minute: A machine uses grammar rules and a dictionary to make grammatically correct questions. It would take 3,000 years to ask every possible question. Photo by Marc Wathieu

Car Culture exhibit. The Germans love cars in all forms. Photo by Alberto Martinez

ZKM Karlsruhe – a great location

The ZKM Karlsruhe is located in Karlsruhe! All jokes aside, the building has its own special history, as so many German buildings do. The ZKM Karlsruhe building used to be an arms factory and has been used by ZKM and others since 1997. The modern ZKM_Cube events space is definitely a Karlsruhe landmark.

The ZKM Cube. Photo by: JOEXX

The ZKM Karlsruhe is even home to a movie theater, the Filmpalast. Karlsruhe is about an hour’s drive from Stuttgart. I hope with this article you can see the ZKM Karlsruhe is worth the trip!