1. INTRODUCTION
With the reopening of the HOUSE OF PHOTOGRAPHY at DEICHTORHALLEN HAMBURG, a new center for visual media is being created in cooperation with the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS. As part of this project, the digital platform PHOTOGRAPHY EXPANDED (working title) is to be developed as an integral component of an educational and competence center.
The goal is to create a digital infrastructure that brings together the activities related to the discourse and exhibition series VIRAL HALLUCINATIONS, offers in-depth content and tools for image analysis, and thus establishes a long-term public knowledge space for the critical examination of digital imagery.
The platform is intended to make complex discourses on visual literacy and disinformation accessible, foster transdisciplinary networks between art, education, and research, and strengthen users’ reflective participation and digital agency. Therefore, the platform serves as a space for reflection, knowledge production, and aesthetic practice.
2. PROJECT GOALS
• Digital Infrastructure: Conveying visual and media literacy
• Transdisciplinary Network: Connecting art, research, and education
• Analog and Digital Education: Integration of online and on-site offerings
• Participatory Tools: Interactive formats for art, education, and research contexts.
• Public Knowledge Space: Long-term establishment of a platform for digital visual culture.
• Promotion of a self-determined, critical, and active approach to visual information
3. RELEVANCE
The engagement with visions of the future of our society is increasingly taking place online. Factual, manipulated, and synthetic content often appears equally photographic and is difficult to distinguish. This makes analytical and creative skills in handling image material more important than ever. The planned center aims to explore current questions in digital visual culture and create a space for research, education, and artistic practice.
Currently, the House of Photography lacks the spatial and digital infrastructure to comprehensively represent academic and scientific discourses. Content developed in educational formats is currently only visible in ongoing exhibitions or publications. With the development of the platform, content will be made accessible in diverse forms: as text, visual, and interactive media. A dialogue space will be created where art, media studies, digital visual cultures, and socio-political issues intersect.
4. SCOPE OF WORK
The agency is expected to conceptualize, design, and technically implement the platform. Key components include:
• Content: Article/text database, image archives, and glossary (including simplified language) with filter functionality
• Features: Annotation, mapping, storytelling, interactive forums, teaching material downloads, user journey exports
• Design: Artistic concept with 2D and 3D presentation of content (classic 2D and navigation within three-dimensional coordinate systems), inactivity mode, animated graphics
• Technology: Responsive design, accessibility (BITV 2.0), multilingual (German/English), possibly text-to-voice, GDPR-compliant, current SEO standards, integration of externally developed maps as part of the site
• Maintenance and Support: Regular security and functionality updates, technical support, troubleshooting, adjustments
• Modularity: Possibility for future expansion and customization
• Backend: CMS-based structure with user roles and easy content management
• Integration: Embedding of external image sources (e.g. social media) and multimedia content (text, image, audio, video)
• Collaboration Area: Workspace that enables collaboration between users on texts and content. Possible editorial system for curators and project participants/digital residencies
• Style Guide: Creation of a style guide based on the platform design for related content on website, social media, and for promotional purposes
• Usage and Licensing Rights: Source code transfer: rights to the source code and created designs. Usage rights: clarification of the use of third-party plugins and media.
• Optional: Kinetic typography and animation, motion graphics, moving, hallucinatory graphics, interactive experiences
5. APPLICATION DOCUMENTS
• Agency profile and reference projects
• Concept proposal (design and technical implementation)
• Team structure and timeline
• Rough cost estimate (by project phases)
• Notes on sustainability, data protection, and accessibility
6. TIMELINE AND BUDGET
• Project start: Q3 2025
• Beta version: Q2 2026
• Completion: End of 2026/early 2027
• Budget: €45,000 – €50,000 (2025–2027), spread over the project period 2025–2027
• Presentation date: CW 43/44
• Presentation duration: 60 minutes
• Compensation for presentation of selected pitches: €500
7. DEADLINE AND CONTACT
Submission deadline:
Mon. October 6, 2025, 12 a.m. (midnight)to digital@deichtorhallen.de
Contacts:
• Nadine Isabelle Henrich (Curator House of Photography)
• Priska Dolling (Digital Projects)
If you have any questions, please contact us at digital@deichtorhallen.de.
We look forward to receiving your submissions.
ATTACHMENTS:
Please contact digital@deichtorhallen.de to request the download folder.
among other things:
• Image material (excerpt from the digital image archives, interior and exterior views, exhibitions, events)
• Draft of sitemap
• Protocol of concept meetings
• Concept paper for the platform + center including design briefing
• Example map discourse space
• Booklet and case studies from the series VIRAL HALLUCINATIONS
• Logos of DEICHTORHALLEN/ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS