ART+COM: PIONEERING DIGITAL MEDIA IN WEST BERLIN (1987–1993)
ORIGINS OF A VISIONARY LAB
In the mid-1980s, the idea of everyone owning a personal computer still felt like science fiction. Yet in West Berlin, a visionary group began exploring the computer not just as a tool—but as a medium for communication, creativity, and urban transformation.
At the heart of this movement was Edouard Bannwart, a professor of urban studies, who initiated a research project on data communication between art academies in Berlin, Braunschweig, and Kassel. His work laid the foundation for what would become one of Europe’s most influential media art collectives.
INTERDISCIPLINARY SPARKS
Bannwart gradually brought together a constellation of digital and analog minds:
• Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss from the University of the Arts
• Wolfgang Krueger from Mental Images, a Berlin-based software company
• Students from the Technical University Berlin
Late-night discussions blurred disciplinary boundaries until a shared language emerged, fusing art, code, architecture and urban theory. Funding from the Scientific Senate in Berlin made it possible for Bannwart, Fleischmann, Strauss and Krueger to design and launch their first long-term research projects.
FOUNDING ART+COM
In 1988, this collective founded ART+COM, a registered association dedicated to designing and developing digital media. Thanks to Bannwart's excellent communication skills, ART+COM received generous additional support from Berkom, Deutsche Telekom's research arm, as well as free hardware from the IT industry. This allowed ART+COM to fund more researchers and invite artists to experiment with their cutting-edge equipment.
MEDIA ART MEETS URBAN FUTURES
Two groundbreaking projects, "Berlin-Cyber City" and "Home of the Brain," emerged from long-term research initiatives such as Bannwart's "New Media in Urban Planning" and Fleischmann and Strauss's "The Digital Model House."
Berlin-Cyber City (1989): East and West Berliners discuss the future around an interactive table.
A city simulation in which visitors could interact with a sensor and a map of Berlin on a table, allowing them to explore both Berlin's past and future. They could even use Data Googles to dive into an underground bunker and discover hidden Nazi drawings—a particularly relevant experience after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Home of the Brain (1989): Philosopher's Virtual Houses
One of the world’s first artistic, full-VR installations, inviting visitors into a virtual version of Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery. Inside, visitors encounter an exhibition of four thinkers — Vilém Flusser, Paul Virilio, Joseph Weizenbaum, and Marvin Minsky — via Data Googles and a Data Glove. Each thinker is housed in their own “House of Thought.” “Home of the Brain” received the Golden Nica from Ars Electronica in 1992.
These two works imagined a seamless digital landscape—where people could zoom from a bird’s-eye view of Berlin into intimate philosophical spaces. Think Alice in Wonderland meets Power of Ten.
TerraVision (1993–94): The Precursor to Google Earth
This vision of a continuous world information structure culminated in TerraVision, developed by Pavel Mayer, Joachim Sauter, Axel Schmidt, Gerd Grueneis, Dirk Luesebrink, Hendrik Tramberend and Steffen Meschkat. It built on earlier work by Bannwart, Fleischmann, and Strauss, including Berlin-Cyber City and Digital Urban Planning.
TerraVision used satellite data to create a navigable 3D model of Earth—years before Google Earth (2007) and Google Earth Timelapse (2021) brought similar concepts to the masses.
🎬 Watch the original TerraVision demo: TerraVision (1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBMJVgi8vm8.
The Billion Dollar Code
The legal dispute between ART+COM and Google over TerraVision’s intellectual property became widely known through the Netflix docudrama "The Billion Dollar Code", which dramatized the story behind the technology and the people who built it.
Legacy
ART+COM’s work wasn’t just ahead of its time—it helped shape the digital tools we now take for granted. Their fusion of art, technology, and urban imagination continues to inspire media artists, technologists, and thinkers around the world.