“How Can CODE Become an International Player?” – Interview with Aliz Markovits, Director of CODE

How was CODE Digital Experience Centre established, what needs does it respond to, and what professional directions define its future? We spoke with CEO Aliz Markovits about the role of digital culture, the significance of immersive spaces, and the challenges and opportunities of building such an institution in Veszprém. 

CODE Veszprém is a digital experience centre and immersive audiovisual institution in the heart of Veszprém. Veszprém is a mid-sized town in Western Hungary with a population of 60.000. The city has strong cultural, touristic and educational traditions. CODE is a space where the meeting point of art, science, and technology becomes tangible through complex, multi-sensory experiences. We work with three main experience zones: the 360° Hexagon space, a 3D Studio, and an interactive exhibition area, each engaging visitors in a different way.

As the director of the institution, my role is partly to define CODE’s strategic direction: how it can be both internationally relevant and deeply rooted in the local cultural context. At the same time, I coordinate content and curatorial decisions, support the team, and build professional partnerships and collaborations.

CODE was established as one of the key legacies of the Veszprém–Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture programme. The founding idea was to fill a long-standing gap: in Hungary there are very few stable, professionally equipped venues where digital art, new media, and immersive culture can exist not merely as occasional projects but as continuous institutional practice.

Within Veszprém’s cultural ecosystem, we wanted to create a new kind of meeting place — one that opens up traditional cultural consumption toward contemporary, experience-based, technology-driven forms, while also taking on a strong educational role in digital literacy.

Especially important for us is the goal of bringing younger generations closer to traditional cultural topics. Often, it’s not a lack of interest, but a missing point of connection: CODE offers a language and format — visuality, interactivity, playfulness, and active involvement — through which a classical oeuvre, a historical period, or even a topic from the natural sciences can become a personal and genuinely immersive experience.

In this sense, CODE responds both to a generational cultural demand and to a professional need: it is a platform that is relevant for Hungarian and international digital creators alike, providing space not only for presentation but also for development.

In project selection we always try to balance three criteria:

• Artistic and conceptual strength — the experience should have a genuine statement or intellectual depth, not just spectacle.
• Technological quality and experimentation — it should use immersive form consciously, adding something new to what we think an exhibition or performance can be.
• Audience accessibility — it should offer multiple entry points for different publics, from children to professional communities.

Recent and current examples that illustrate this approach include:

• Immersive fine-arts projects: such as Csontváry – In the Language of Photons, where iconic artistic legacies are re-read through digital and audiovisual reinterpretations in our spaces.
• Experiences at the intersection of science and art: 3D, data-driven or knowledge-based projects about space, nature, or historical environments — educational yet aesthetically powerful.
• Contemporary audiovisual and music collaborations: the Hexagon often functions as a live, performative surface created together with VJs and media artists.

The relevance of immersive spaces comes from a major shift in cultural consumption: today’s audiences want not only to look at culture but to enter it, inhabit it, and take part in it. Digital and immersive culture is not “lighter” — it operates with a different logic, turning reception into a lived experience.

It is also a strong international trend that immersive experiences are becoming one of the fastest-growing cultural and tourism formats.

In this landscape, CODE represents the idea that a 21st-century cultural institution can be:

• interdisciplinary (science + technology + art),
• experience-based yet intellectually meaningful,
• a community platform, not only an exhibition space,
• and a learning environment where digital literacy is built through culture.

Launching an institution like this naturally involves several layers of challenge:

• Technical challenges: immersive systems require continuous calibration and maintenance, and each new project redefines how the space functions. Stability comes from strong operational protocols and constant dialogue between technicians and artists.
• Financial sustainability: high-tech spaces are more costly than traditional exhibition venues. Long-term, we need multiple pillars: ticket revenue, co-productions, grants, sponsorship, and international exchange programmes.
• Community embedding: as a new institution, building trust and local routines takes time. We consciously develop local partnerships, school and family programmes, and projects that connect directly to Veszprém.
• Location and seasonality: Veszprém is a mid-sized city, which makes it harder to reach the “critical mass” of visitors consistently. Meanwhile, the Balaton region brings strong tourism but also strong seasonality. This creates fluctuating visitor numbers, requiring careful programming and outreach strategies.

In the coming years, we want to develop further in several directions.

One of our most important ambitions is to strengthen the CODE LAB, a content-development workshop closely connected to CODE. The aim of the CODE LAB is to ensure that we are not only a presenting venue but also an interdisciplinary creative and development hub where new immersive works are born. Here we work together with Hungarian and international artists, technology partners, universities, and creative teams to produce projects designed specifically for CODE’s spaces and tools, while also creating content that can be presented internationally.

Additionally, we aim to:

• Enable international co-productions and premieres — making CODE a place where new international works are created or debut.
• Support Hungarian digital creators — offering stable development and presentation opportunities for young and mid-career artists.
• Expand interactive, learning-oriented programmes for children, students, and families — ensuring that digital culture becomes a natural part of everyday life in the region.