PHENOMENAL APPARATUSES

Phenomenal things happen – sometimes beyond our conscious perception: paper wrinkles through humidity. Ants orient themselves by swarm intelligence – toads at the earth’s magnetic field. Bacteria produce rock in impressive formations. Gall wasps manipulate trees so that they grow gall houses for their larvae instead of leaves. In some areas it is easier to get Coca Cola than clean drinking water.

The aim of the project was to investigate particularly outstanding phenomena – natural and others – to make them visible and to transform them into apparatuses in order to make the phenomena applicable, tangible, controllable and above all usable. The challenge was in particular to transfer the phenomena striking for their simplicity into equally simple but astonishing and convincing apparatuses in order to implement complex objects or processes phenomenally simply.

The project was at first divided into three short projects accompanied by various excursions and selected guests. During the two weeks of each short project, a variety of ideas were developed and implemented in quick experiments. At the end of the last, free short project, the students chose a topic from the ideas they had developed so far and developed a functioning phenomenal apparatus.