ViSIT - virtual museum for Passau and Kufstein

ViSIT, a programme funded by the EFRE within the project Interreg Bayern-Österreich 2014 - 2020, uses the digital structural transformation for an enhanced valorization of our cultural heritage: The Passauer Veste Oberhaus and the Festung Kufstein are the two exponants of castles and residences in the Inn-Salzach-Donau region that will be developed for visitors by using multimedia installations and a virtual compound system -further locations like Golling, Salzburg, Tittmoning and Burghausen will likewise be integrated.

Border-crossing Cultural Region Inn-Salzach-Donau

This project is going to make those castle complexes, as witnesses of a mutual, border-crossing history, come alive for their visitors in an innovative way, thus developing wider audiences at all locations. Among those architectual sights, the museal collections will be integrated as well, constituting important reference collections for the historico-cultural connected area shaped by Bavaria, Austria/Tirol and the Prince-Bishoprics Salzburg and Passau. The museums are working together with academic partners from the fields of cultural studies and computer science, to create a transboundary digital infrastructure for an innovative presentation and safeguarding of this cultural heritage.

Making the Cultural Area Come Alive Together

The historic watch tower of the Veste Oberhaus and the "kaiser-/fox tower" of the Festung Kufstein will be converted into exemplary multimedial places of experience: visitors (locals and tourists) will be offered possibilities of information and interaction about other castle complexes across locations in the Inn-Salzach-Donau area. That way, the visitors' attention will be drawn towards other castles/palaces as attractive destinations as well.

Virtual Museum and Multimedia Place of Experience

Contents across locations will be created for the other participating museums at the other locations (as associated partners, see appendix), to create a compound system of related offers as a border-crossing “Virtual Museum.” Transferable software frameworks (Open Source) and "Best Practices" (published digitally) will allow to expand the compound in the future.

Project Consortium

Museum Partners  

• Museum und Veste Oberhaus, Stadt Passau (D)  
• Festung Kufstein, Top-City-Kufstein, Gesellschaft für Kultur-, Freizeit- und Stadtmarketing mbH, Kufstein (A) 

Academic Partners  

• University of Passau (Lead, Germany)
• Chair of Digital Humanities (Coordination)
• Chair of Art History and Visual Culture Studies 
• Chair of Distributed Information Systems
• Chair of Digital Image Processing
• Chair of Information Systems 
• University of Applied Sciences Kufstein Tirol, Kufstein (Austria)
• Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Salzburg (Austria)

Further Information and Press (in German)

Principal Investigator(s) at the University	Prof. Dr. Malte Rehbein (Lehrstuhl für Digital Humanities)
Project period	01.10.2016 - 30.09.2019
Source of funding	Europäische Union (EU) > EU - Europäischer Struktur- und Investitionsfonds (ESI-Fonds) 2014-2020 > EU - ESIF - Europäischer Fonds für regionale Entwicklung (EFRE) 2014-2020 > EU - ESIF - EFRE - INTERREG Österreich-Bayern 2014-2020