The ZKM (German: Zentrum für Kunst und Medien) organizes special exhibitions and thematic events, conducts research and produces works on the effects of media, digitization, and globalization, and offers public as well as individualized communications and educational programs.

"The mission of the ZKM is to explore the creative possibilities of connecting the traditional arts and media technologies to achieve innovative results.

Today, following guiding ideas mainly inform the work of the ZKM: The founding of the Center for Art and Media goes back to the early 1980s.

In February 1988 the ZKM Project Group presented the results of their work, titled Concept ‘88, which described the initiative to bring the arts and the new media together in both theory and practice.

[8] For a considerable time, the ZKM's future permanent location was envisaged in an area to the south of Karlsruhe Central Station.

An international architecture competition for a new building on the site was announced in March 1989, from which a visionary design by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas resulted.

[11] Karlsruhe Council opted for repurposing Hallenbau A [Hall A], built 1914–1918 by architect Philipp Jakob Manz as a weapons and munitions factory, which was then an industrial ruin.

The building, 312 meters long and divided into ten atria, was on the former factory site of the Industriewerke Karlsruhe-Augsburg (IWKA), which had been an industrial brownfields since the 1970s[12] in the south-west of Karlsruhe that separated the city center from the surrounding urban areas.

The conversion, based on plans drawn up by the Hamburg office of Schweger Architects,[13] and the construction of the blue Cube annex inspired by Koolhaas's original design, commenced in 1993.

Beyond Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art"[20] (from May to September, 2002) or "bit international"[21] (February 2008 to January 2009) were highly respected both nationally and abroad.

Among others monographic exhibitions, on Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, Sigmar Polke, Franz West, Sylvie Fleury, Martin Kippenberger and Tobias Rehberger have been taking place since 1999.

The form and content of events vary: from opera with multimedial stages to scientific symposia and popular concerts through to performances, dance or film-screenings.

In 2018, 20 ZKM exhibitions were on show at locations around the world, including in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, the Philippines, India, South Korea, and China.

[36][37] Alongside the exhibitions, events take place as platforms for exchanging opinions and information with visitors and figures from various spheres of social life such as politics, the economy, and philosophy.

The form and content of the events vary: from opera with a multimedia stage, scientific symposia, and popular concerts to performances, dance, and film screenings.

The goal is to analyze and trial the latest technologies to determine their applicability and relevance for art and the information society, which is increasingly connected on a global scale and communicates online.

Contemporary concepts – for example, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) in virtual reality (VR) and AR applications, immersive or sensor-based environments, and investigating the artistic potential of electromagnetic fields – are considered across genres and media, examined in terms of their artistic applicability, and realized in productions.

In addition to these there is the collection of approximately 1,200 art videos and 13,800 audio tracks, which are not stored in the museum, but can be accessed via the ZKM | Media Library.

[45] The joint library of the ZKM and the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) has holdings of approximately 60,000 books, journals, and digital storage media.