Experience path to develop the senses in Brakel-Bellersen

Hugo Kükelhausen develops sophisticated play and experience equipment, which can be seen in many places and are now available to experience in Bellersen as a permanent installation.

The following describes the individual stations:

Rotating Disc: Depending on the direction of rotation, the spiral shape narrows or widens. Look at the spiral for a while as it slowly rotates in one direction, then focus on a point in the surroundings, everything seems to contract or move away from that point.

Trickling Board: The large disc is filled with various granular materials. Gates allow for a slow trickling from one side to the other. The granules constantly rearrange themselves, never forming a uniform mixture. The order and shape of the individual layers resemble geological formations found in the Earth's crust. If you turn too fast and don't give the mixture time to settle into layers, chaos ensues. It takes time to find a new order again.

Sound Column: This stone block produces a sound when its surfaces are wetted with water and rubbed vigorously. This requires some practice. Musicians utilize the same effect when playing a water organ. The sound is also audible and tangible by striking the stone with the palm of the hand or a wooden stick. The stone resonates like a tuning fork.

Flow Stones: Water forms whirlpools and eddies around obstacles. Bodies placed in the flow create different flow patterns due to their varying shapes. Observing this for a while allows you to absorb the pulsating rhythm. This can have a relaxing effect, achieved through observing the movement of water.

Water Column: The crank sets the water in motion, gradually increasing speed to create a vortex. The spiral form of the water vortex is one of the fundamental phenomena of nature. The spiral also shapes the developmental movements of life, from the embryo on a small scale to spiral nebulae spanning light-years in the universe.

Chain Bridge: You will initially cross the chain bridge with the help of the handrail. With some practice, you may be able to do it without assistance. This station challenges your sense of balance and the agility of your entire body.

Swinging Board: Here, participants can develop their sense of balance on a springy surface. Similar to balancing on free-swinging felled tree trunks, the entire body must coordinate the interplay between gravity, the restoring force of the springy elements, and one's own reactions. Initially with a handrail, and perhaps later without.

Humming Hole: A cavity in a stone block, large enough to put your head in and hum. After a short trial, you will find the tone that sets the airspace between your head and the cave wall into vibration. The resonance generated by your own voice transfers from the head to the entire body, providing an inner massage. This allows you to experience your own voice in a new, very intense way.

Parabolic Mirror Pair: This installation is for communication and naturally requires multiple participants. Speaking into the shell at normal volume allows your speech to be understood at the opposite end and at every point in between. This parabolic mirror pair demonstrates the directed emission, focusing, or bundling of sound waves. What is understandable to many for TV reception, yet remains incomprehensible, can be discovered here with some initiative and collaboration. You can hear yourself over a distance of 30 to 40 meters.

Octoscope: Looking through the octoscope provides a multifaceted view of the southern part of Bellersen and the surrounding area. Multiplying the chosen motif with the help of several mirrors inside the device is compared by Kükelhaus to cell division, the process underlying all living things.

Swing Rope: The swing rope device has a rope horizontally attached between two poles. Three swing ropes hang from it. When two ropes are used simultaneously, there is mutual influence on the respective vibrations. This process can already provide an impression of coupled vibrations.

Balance Blocks: The wood blocks are lined up on two parallel steel cables. Due to different center of mass heights, they are sometimes unstable and sometimes stable. This trains the sense of balance.

Big Swing: Even adults rediscover their joy in the evenly calm pendulum motion on the big swing. In the interaction of rising and falling, opposites are experienced that mutually depend on each other. The human becomes the pendulum weight and feels ascending and descending forces on their own body.

Balancing Disks: The small balancing disks are used to practice balance. Two people can try it together, holding hands and eventually trying to maintain balance alone.

Seesaw: On the seesaw, balance can be achieved like on a scale. Lighter individuals sit further out to balance a heavier person. Conversely, heavier individuals sit further in to be able to seesaw on an equal basis with a lighter person.

Rotating Disc 2: This disc is rotated slowly and observed from a distance of about 6 meters. Participants have the impression that the previously flat, two-dimensional drawing then appears three-dimensional. The center of the disc is difficult to see when the disc is at rest, as the numerous eccentric circular arcs distract from it. When the disc rotates, the center becomes the only resting point visible. The inertia of the eye causes the sickle-shaped areas to merge into perspectively drawn bands. They describe the outer surface of a truncated cone and its crater. Because the central axis of the seemingly spatial spherical crater coincides at its base with the center of the discs, the upper edge of the structure rotates around the axis of the disc. Hugo Kükelhaus explains this phenomenon as follows: "The impression is inescapable because the spatiality is exclusively generated by myself."

Kaleidoscope: Looking through the kaleidoscope reveals a random pattern of variously mirrored, colorful glass beads. New symmetries and orders constantly emerge as the large object carrier is rotated.