Music Videos at World Heritage Sites

Visitors to the Völklingen Ironworks are currently invited to immerse themselves in the world of music videos. What makes the experience unique is tonwelt’s Multimedia Guide, which combines image and sound into a perfectly synchronized whole – with lip-synchronized and automatically triggered playback.

Amid the giant industrial machinery of the Völklingen Ironworks, punk is making plenty of noise. And not only punk: Across numerous flickering screens, visitors encounter Nirvana, Queen, Eminem, Billie Eilish, Pussy Riot, and even a video by Joseph Beuys.

Until October, the restored Blower Hall – which became the first industrial monument to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 – is hosting the exhibition The World of Music Video.

The exhibition presents well-known, historic and contemporary music videos. It explores pressing current issues such as artificial intelligence, environmental destruction, political, psychological and physical violence, as well as questions of gender in all their forms.

Inside the 6,000-square-metre hall, where steelworkers once produced armaments for both World Wars, the music industry has now taken centre stage.

In the recently opened industrial shafts, Massive Attack’s Voodoo in My Blood is playing. “It is truly hypnotic and disturbing short-form cinema – art of the highest order,” says Ralf Beil, Director General of the Völklingen Ironworks World Heritage Site since May 2020.

“The Völklingen Ironworks is a great space of possibility for fascinating art and cultural projects beyond the mainstream. In the future, I want to strengthen engagement with the realities and visions that shape our world,” Ralf Beil stated when he was appointed two years earlier.

At the time, the organisation was looking for “a courageous creator” who could develop new approaches to communicating industrial heritage in Saarland, including across borders.

And this is exactly what the art historian, who holds a doctorate, has achieved with his first major exhibition – a show that is unique in both its scale and quality.

“More than eighty of the most interesting music videos from recent years and decades come together within the World Heritage Site to create a remarkable journey and panorama of this art form. We want to inspire visitors emotionally as well as intellectually; a physical experience is guaranteed within this true music video universe,” explains Ralf Beil.

The megatrend of immersion has therefore also arrived at the World Heritage Site: Throughout the Völklingen Ironworks, visitors wearing headphones move rhythmically in front of monumental screens measuring up to seven metres wide.

Some are completely absorbed in the music that only they can hear.

This experience is made possible by tonwelt, a company whose aim is to “communicate information in a way that is appropriate for different target groups while simultaneously creating emotions”.

The Berlin-based company has already equipped numerous museums and exhibition venues with customised audiovisual solutions. Its clients include, among others, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Louvre, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion and Reconciliation in Berlin.

For the Völklingen Ironworks, tonwelt specifically developed a Multimedia Guide featuring a lip-synchronised audio track. When a visitor approaches one of the monitors or projections, the system automatically delivers the matching sound precisely in sync with the image.

This is far from a trivial technical achievement, considering the exhibition layout with many stations positioned close together. Gürsan Acar emphasises that the requirements placed on the exhibition technology were extremely high.

According to the tonwelt Managing Director, nowhere is the separation between image and sound more obvious than in music videos.

“A delay between image and sound is already clearly noticeable to non-professional viewers from around 60 to 80 milliseconds.” Professionals can detect this difference even at 20 to 40 milliseconds.

To achieve an immersive exhibition experience, projectors, monitors and the Media Guide system must therefore be precisely synchronised down to the millisecond.

“With consumer technology, BYOD, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth beacons, an exhibition such as The World of Music Video could not be realised,” explains Gürsan Acar.

In addition to synchronising the audio of the videos, another challenge was ensuring that sound could be triggered automatically at the projection stations while remaining as interference-free as possible for visitors moving through the exhibition.

To achieve this, tonwelt further refined its Triggering technology.

“The technology is essentially a form of localisation of the respective Media Guide,” explains Gürsan Acar. “A specialised high-end technology that we have developed further over the past 15 years.”

The tonwelt supraGuide Diva model enables particularly precise sound control and transmission in Focus Mode.

Visitors automatically receive the signal when they approach the symbol on the floor.

This precision is essential because the trigger zones in the Völklingen Ironworks are located relatively close together.

The screens are often even used on both the front and back sides – displaying different videos.

This is particularly remarkable because signals can normally be received within larger, often less clearly defined zones that overlap and may interfere with one another.

The installation itself was also a challenge, as UNESCO World Heritage Sites are subject to specific requirements.

“The Blower Hall naturally had to remain untouched,” explains Acar. “Understandably, nothing could be drilled into, attached or glued there. We coordinated the installation very carefully in advance. That is why we were able to complete it within one week. Not an easy task with 80 stations!”

Gürsan Acar himself was present on site. He says that it helps to get involved personally from time to time.

“That's when ideas emerge. How could things be implemented better? In Völklingen, we developed the next generation of Trigger Points and will now implement them as well.”

Acar also reveals that the tonwelt team discussed the exhibition content every evening over dinner.

“The exhibition clearly encourages communication. You walk between the giant screens and suddenly discover things you had not noticed before.”

With tonwelt, Ralf Beil has therefore created a completely new form of knowledge transfer within this museum-like industrial environment, activating not only auditory and visual senses but also visitors’ physical movement through the space.

For a good reason, there is no digital preparation or follow-up for the exhibition: the visit itself should be an experience and have a lasting impact.

“Because ultimately, you can watch any video on YouTube, but that is naturally not as exciting. Here, we watch the videos on site, become enthusiastic, discuss them afterwards and then start searching for more information online.”

According to interpretation expert Gürsan Acar, this becomes a truly meaningful engagement when it is not designed merely for reception, but instead generates communication and active participation.

This text was originally published in German. The English translation provided here was generated using AI.