Using virtual reality (VR) technology and a digitized archive of images, we want to invite reflection and research on various modes of knowing in connection to materiality and code, activity of images and the space needed for this. Can digital humanities open up to new comprehensive experiments around the presence and the absence, on the material picture-relations and the gaps of the in-between, moving toward regions of human knowledge which meaning cannot convey? What could a generative and humane blend of digital and humanities look like, embracing the simultaneously pragmatic and theatrical motto of the »production of presence« as Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has called it? The article was published as part of the catalog to the interactive exhibition »Extended Reality – Code and Materiality in Art and Culture« (03.09.–05.10.2021), a cooperation between the interdisciplinary INKA research group at the HTW – University for Applied Sciences Berlin, and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« and Media Theater.

The authors acknowledge the support of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2025 – 390648296. Translation and print version are funded by the ERDF special program »Strengthening the Potential for Innovation in Culture II« (INP-II) with kind support from the Berlin Senate Administration for Culture and Europe.