175 Years of Zeiss

The tech manufacturer ZEISS’s corporate museum in Oberkochen (Baden Württemberg, Germany) offers its visitors an experience that includes more than 1,000 impressive exhibits on over 1,000 square meters. Grouped into ten topics, the museum presents interesting, noteworthy, and surprising facts on the history of development of the long-standing company’s products and technologies.

ZEISS interactive company exhibition

In April 2022, our partner Ars Electronica Solutions enriched the ZEISS Museum of Optics with two interactive media installations. To celebrate ZEISS’s 175th anniversary, those present the tech corporation’s eminent milestones from past, present, and future. Garamantis had the opportunity to make their own contribution to these two interactive walls in the form of software, sensor system, and the central CMS.

Two Interactive Walls With An Unusual Concept

An interactive milestones wall allows visitors to take a self-guided journey through the history of ZEISS innovations. With its clear layout and design, the wall displays the most important technological strands and milestones in the company’s long history. Visitors can move a 55″ touch screen along the entire 15 metre length of the wall to delve deeper into the historical details of the timeline. The sliding screen digitally enhances and animates the underlying analogue timeline. The position-dependent playback of content and the seamless transition between the printed wall and the digital monitor provide an exciting and informative journey through time.

An extensive interactive monitor wall consisting of 28 synchronised and bezel-less Full HD 55″ displays is fed with content from a total of 4 PCs. It presents ZEISS’s vision of the technological and social developments to be expected in the future. The interaction that takes place here is more subliminal – it works through the visitor’s position and movement in and through the room, or via tablet PC control.

At 2.5 metres high and 10 metres wide, this wall symbolises the 175-year history of ZEISS and its visionary outlook. In addition to that, the wall acts as a mirror reflecting the exhibition space in front of it and as a window into the future. At the centre of an ever-changing system of orbits and bits and bytes, a stylised iris focuses on the most important megatrends at ZEISS, depending on the user’s interaction.

ZEISS can also use this large display wall with its enormous resolution as a flexible presentation display for corporate or public events.

Photos: ZEISS, Michaela Fragner