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German and Polish cities united in cyberspace by Luneta project

German and Polish cities united in cyberspace by Luneta project

New technologies

Two European cities, separated by geography, history and culture are being united in cyberspace.

Thanks to the Luneta project, people in Germany and Poland are getting a taste of life on the other side without really having to leave their respective countries.

A blue dome in Berlin’s Dorothea-Schlegel Platz is all one needs to end up in Pilsudskiego 105, in front of the train station in Wroclaw in Poland.

With the aid of cameras and a video wall, the Luneta project connects the cities in real time with less than a second’s delay. It creates the illusion of stepping from one place into the other.

Curator of an interdisciplinary performance which is part of the project, Chris Baldwin says “Luneta is really a window, it’s a window between two cities, that are divided. Divided in many different ways”.

“They are divided obviously because both cities are in different countries. They are divided through language, and they are divided through geography, but they are also divided through imagination and memory, principally because until 1945 Wroclaw was Breslau it was obviously a German city,” he said.

The camera system is crucial for the project.

The parts of the dome structure not accessible to the public, contain the project’s backbone.

There are monitors mounted on a special scaffolding as well as the servers that make the connection between the two towns possible.

The idea of ‘playing’ is integral to the project. As a result, visitors are encouraged to dance with viewers on the other side of the screen or paint virtual messages.

For most visitors, distance and cultural differences dissolve as they meet neighbours in another country. The Luneta installations are open until July 3.

Euronews