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Karlsruhe, Germany

ZKM. It may sound like a new model of souped-up Mercedes, but people in this industrial city in southern Germany know it as the self-proclaimed largest media arts museum in the world.

It's officially called the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, or Center for Art and Media Technology, but it's commonly called the ZKM. It's housed in a giant converted 1918 munitions factory, and its 10 large atriums contain three art museums and several art institutes.

During a freebie day early this year as part of the ZKM's 10-year anniversary celebration, about 5,000 visitors browsed through the block-long facility. (Usually, the daily visitor count is around 300.)

"It was kind of like going into the belly of a machine," said visitor Mike Yong, a 21-year-old student at the University of Chicago. "A little bit dark, loud, overwhelming — weird parapets hanging everywhere."

His impression is largely accurate, though I would add disorienting, odd, fascinating, strange, irritating, lively and (sometimes) funny.

From the first step into the cavernous entry hall, strung with colorful, electrically lighted mobiles, you know you aren't in a place that just hangs canvases on the walls. Right beyond the information desk and the coat check room, doors open to a bewildering display of contraptions, gizmos and flashing images that showcase works created by electronic technologies.

You're encircled by movie, video and TV screens. You can change images with the click of a mouse and the press of a button. A computer turns the lines of your hand into part of a three-dimensional graphic display. A spy cam lets you watch people watching people watching people. With your shadow, you can bounce electronic bubbles to someone else's shadow.

The ZKM's museums include the State Gallery, which exhibits postwar German art, and the Modern Art Museum (closed until May 10), which features various post-1960s art movements such as Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. But its claim to fame among new media aficionados is the Media Museum — which is not about art movements, but about art that moves.

Works in the Media Museum haven't withstood the test of time, more like the test of last week. The museum's digital interactivity makes it particularly appealing to members of the Internet generation — someone like Yong, who was taking a semester off to live in Germany.

"There are lots of families and young couples who didn't look like they would normally be into this," Yong said of the crowds swirling around the halls that day. "And tottering old people who don't really know what's going on but who are enjoying themselves anyway."

Tottering?

Hmm. I wonder whom he's referring to? OK, I admit I'm an iPod-illiterate baby boomer and, yes, I needed an afternoon latte at the museum cafe soon after 1 p.m. But tottering?

A growing reputation

Karlsruhe, in the southern third of the country just off the Rhine River, is not a common tourist stop. It was founded in 1715 — recent by German standards — and it was bombed in World War II. It lacks the half-timbered-house-and-cobblestone-street charm of a place such as Heidelberg. Karlsruhe is more industrial than quaint.

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