From October to December 2024, UNPLUGGED entered one of its most technically oriented environments: the Technical University of Vienna.
The exhibition was installed on the ground floor of Building BD at Lehargasse 6. Unlike an enclosed gallery, this was an open university space through which students, staff and other visitors could pass throughout the day. This placement made it possible for people to encounter UNPLUGGED as part of their everyday academic environment rather than through a dedicated exhibition visit.
And the technical setting produced an interesting experiment.
A small group tested the Be Here Now game. The participants described it as an opportunity to step outside their comfort zone – particularly within a technical university environment where work is usually clearly structured and governed by rules.
The cards did something quite different.
They introduced play, spontaneity and social interaction. The report describes them as a “good spark” for socialising and creating an unusual, playful lunch break. At the same time, the experience revealed an important communication challenge: for audiences accustomed to highly explicit technical information, the connection between the playful exhibition and the EEE sector was not always immediately apparent.
Rather than being a weakness, this observation became an interesting lesson from the travelling exhibition.
How should we communicate circular transformation to people working in different professional cultures? Does every audience need the same amount of explanation? Can ambiguity and play encourage curiosity, or does a technical context require a clearer bridge between experience and subject matter?
The Vienna stop demonstrated why travelling exhibitions are valuable as experimental formats. Moving the same objects and methods into a new context reveals how differently they can be interpreted.
At TU Wien, UNPLUGGED therefore did more than communicate circularity. It created a small disruption within a highly structured environment and demonstrated that stepping outside familiar ways of thinking can itself become part of the learning process.