Managing history, communicating it and leading it into a new age. This is what the Verein Industriekultur am Aabach has set out to do. Together with the Museum Aargau and the Museum Burghalde, they launched a new educational offer yesterday: the IndustriekulTOUR Aabach.

The association is committed to the documentation and signposting of historic industrial culture along the Aabach.

For this very documentation, contemporary witnesses were interviewed over the years to document their experiences of that time, "so that the history of the Aabach is still preserved years later", as Martin Stücheli, councillor and president of the association, explains. The new project was implemented together with the Museum Aargau and the Museum Burghalde.

Around the Aabach, visitors have the opportunity to look back into the past early industrial times of the Aargau on a variety of tours. The Aabach has enabled the construction of factories with mechanically driven machines since the 18th century.

How does the novel cultural experience work?

Interested parties can download the "IndustriekulTOUR Aabach" app onto their smartphone. There you can see the tours that have already been activated. There are currently three different themed tours to choose from.

Two in Lenzburg and one in Seon, further tours, among others in Wildegg, will be activated continuously in the coming weeks and months. Once you have decided on a route, the journey through 300 years of industrial history begins.

Augmented and virtual reality representations make it possible; factory owners, gentlemen and workers "come back to life" on the smartphone. You can hear them and experience the original locations as if you had travelled back in time.

"As cultural and historical educators, we want to increase the immersion even more by adding multiple virtual content layers in the form of audio, video or text files to intensify the visitors' spatial experience," Rudolf tells HBL WebTV.

No interaction necessary

The goal is the so-called seamless user experience: "We want to provide visitors with information about the exhibition without any interaction, if possible," Colomb explains. For this to work, two things need to be known: where the visitor is and at which point in the exhibition what information needs to be conveyed. "In this combination, we are creating something that has never existed before," says the iart software developer.

For the VR experience, the "Hünerwadel Tour" was activated for test purposes on the Müllerhaus site. The tour tells the story of the successful businessman Gottlieb Hünerwadel and leads through the beginnings of the textile industry in Lenzburg.

The approximately 1.2 km long tour starts at the Müllerhaus in Lenzburg, leads to the Aabach and then on to the old town. Those who solve all the quiz questions along the way have the chance to win a coffee or ice cream at Lenzburg Castle.

Culture enthusiasts who don't have a smartphone won't miss out either: the Lenzburg Tourist Office offers folding brochures so that tours can be completed without technology.

Source : Aargauer Zeitung / HBL