In the course of the summer semester 2020, the first real virtual DIGAREC In-Game Photo Gallery was created with the aim of presenting computer game photography works by students of European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam from different semesters and the emerging research field of computer game photography. In previous years, a virtual exhibition had already been developed at DIGAREC – Digital Games Research Center, which could be entered on site at Potsdam’s Science Day, among other events.

However, the Corona pandemic renewed the existing desire to design the gallery as a social space that could be accessed from various end devices. With new tools such as the open source social VR platform Mozilla Hubs, the realisation of such an exhibition became possible. In addition to the exhibition itself, a virtual space was to be created that could be used in a variety of ways, such as for lectures, guided tours or meetings. Unlike Zoom or other video conferencing tools, Mozilla Hubs allows “spatiality”: several groups can meet in the same virtual space and talk separately from each other – for example by switching to different rooms.

The online exhibition was conceived and curated at DIGAREC by Dr. Sebastian Möring and designed and implemented by Lars Pinkwart.

Later, the gallery was presented on the digital stage at the MediaTech Hub Conference 2020 as part of the panel “Humanities go digital – Postcolonial Potsdam and In-Game Photography”.

The gallery was also part of the programme of gamin’siegen – Digital Games Festival and was mentioned in an article about computer game photography in LeMonde.fr.

For Potsdam’s Science Day 2021, a completely redesigned gallery and a special exhibition entitled “Virtual Reality as Educational Technology” by the Chair for Complex Multimedia Application Architectures were presented: The Real Virtual DIGAREC In-Game Photo Gallery 2.0, which made it onto the shortlist of the WISPoP – Potsdam Prize for Science Communication 2021.