THE SPULLENMEN

Our society faces a couple of challenges. We have to deal with climate change, the depletion of limited resources and economical systems that are under pressure. The ability of our society to absorb shocks is also called its resilience. In this installation you can play with the concept of resilience and get a feeling for it.There are multiple lamps, which represent consumers. A generator is a producer and the cables represent the connections or transport routes. The visitor is challenged to power the lamps using the wires. Tthe generator has 3 power outlets. Each lamp has three connections, to either receive power or pass it on to another lamp. The visitor can create a network, and make all the lamps light up. Then he can test the network by pressing a big button which releases a crisis (shocks) on the network and one random connection will fall down. Lamps that were dependent on only one power source lose their access to power and get switched off. But they also don't pass on any power to other lamps anymore, so a part of the network will physically collapse. The challenge is to design a resilient network that can absorb the shocks and leave all the lights on, even after many disturbances.