MehlWelten  | museum installation

Flour processing in a modern mill is basically not visible, as all processes take place in a closed pipe system. With this installation an innovative didactic concept has been realised for the MehlWelten Museum in Wittenberg.

The individual processing steps, from grain to refined flour, are vividly told here. It also gives an idea of the almost unbelievable efficiency of these modern industry plants. The flow of ground products in the mill’s tube system passes through various stations:

The „shooting out“ of debris or malformed grains from the grain stream in the in the „Sortex-Maschine“

The crushing, shattering and tearing of the grains, or „evocation“ of the invisible but furious rotation of the rollers in the roller mills, „Walzenstühlen“.

Sorting and homogenising the various grinding products (meal, semolina, haze, fine meal) in the „Plansichter“.

Three models in the centre of the room provide visitors with information about the processes inside the machines. The decisive factor for the spatial impression, however, is the video installation in combination with the kinetic wall, which consists of 80 moving surfaces. These square surfaces are moved by individually controllable motors whose gentle, quasi-natural movement unobtrusively modulates the daylight in the room. The reminiscence of mill blades or flowing mill streams is entirely intentional.
In the interplay between the movement of the kinetic surfaces, the video projection and a sound montage, the experience of the industrial mill is elevated into abstraction and conveyed emotionally. In the narrative of the process of grain processing, the individual elements of the installation intertwine so skilfully that the boundaries between the analogue and the digital become blurred. – Similar to the grain, the images of the video projection are processed in the „installation mill“ from crushing to sublimation.

The project is a shining example of a museum culture that is not only open to innovative concepts, but actively formulates them itself. Many thanks for the excellent co-operation.