Kinderzentrum Bethel Bielefeld 2023

Arielle

Children's Center, Protestant Hospital in Bethel, Bielefeld

A floating sculpture made of hollow glass spheres that connects three storeys up to the glass roof in the form of an arch. In a two-day workshop by children from all Bielefeld schools, the balls were marked with mirror pens in the Bielefeld football stadium - "auf der Alm".

• 3486 hand-blown blue hollow glass spheres, 80 mm
• Molotow Liquid Chrome
• steel construction
• Alu-Dibond FR, 1315 x 407 x 750 cm
• curated by Samuelis Baumgarte Art Consulting

We developed the sculpture using a 3D program and translated the final form into points. It is a floating, intangible body that, like a luminous apparition, penetrates the projectiles and changes in appearance depending on the viewer's position.

The association with a fish—the Christian symbol "Ichthys"—is just as intentional as that of a bow (metaphor: drawing a bow)—as that of a waterfall—the bubbles, the bubbling, symbolizing the beauty and splendor of water, from which life springs.

To stimulate children's imaginations, we named the sculpture "The Mermaid" to also emphasize the playful nature of the work. The theme of the fairy tale is love.

All the spheres were marked with water-themed mirror markers by children from all grades in Bielefeld, giving each one a unique touch and further enhancing the sense of identification with the artwork. All the spheres were photographed and cataloged. An app was developed that allows children to locate their sphere on a tablet in the foyer below the sculpture.

Through the precise positioning of the markers, the sculpture reveals its origin—a logically mathematical calculation whose tangible nature is rendered obscured by the material, the floating suspension, and the natural light. The sculpture becomes a vibrating organ—an imaginative structure that seems to contradict its technical origins. Although the object is purely mathematically constructed, its lightness and transparency, its changing appearance under different lighting conditions, and the viewer's movement within the space imbue it with a strong physical component.

The hospital's atrium is a place of movement and encounter, a theme we wish to emphasize with this sculpture.

The structure hangs by cords from a modular construction of white aluminum composite panel, which appears as a drawing on the atrium's "sky," like a shadow of the sculpture. The supporting structure is not intended to be purely functional, but also to possess conceptual meaning.

Like a bubble, the glass sculpture has no solid body. It only becomes a whole from the multitude of points—like a swarm that generates associative images.

Through its "shadow," the form and the technical structure are revealed and made visible. Both forms are interdependent and interact with each other. One supports the other.

Heike Weber and Walter Eul, 2023