You can experience amazing things at the 20 sensory stops in the Park of the Senses. As if by magic you set your partner moving on the partner swing; a popular melody rings out at the sound fence if you stroke it at the appropriate pace. Something surprising happens also at the stops for visual effects. A spatial crater appears from turning circles and at the glass prism you will see the world in quite different colours. Also the experience of 'myself' will get a new dimension. If you stand with a partner in front of the mirror stripes, two faces will merge to one.
Nature and sensual experience at the same time
You will have a beautiful view to the 'Römerberg' from the Park of the Senses. Matching the topic it is situated on a large meadow area. It is an ideal place to visit with children.
The four axes
The exhibits are arranged in continuing axes that combine each of the related sense fields.
Vision axis
Seeing is an extremely important but initially unconscious sense.
Only by activating and disassociating, you become aware of visual processes. The first five stops start the inner activity of the eye. The last two stops, mirror sill and perspective, show that seeing and being seen is staging at the same time.
Balance and touching axis
Balance and touching enable you to experience your body in its relationship to the Earth. The body senses convey important basic experiences for the development of the physical self and keep being a challenge into old age. Balancing and feeling with the feet play a major part in this. Both of them revitalise the relationship to the Earth.
Resonance and hearing axis
For hearing you need inner silence. Hearing is a social sense that only develops by cooperation, by resonance, by listening and understanding. The axis begins with the partner swing that requires 'listening to each other' because the two swinging persons depend on each other because of the resonance of connected movements. The following five acoustic stops demonstrate how sound and air connect speaking and listening persons as their common medium.
'Myself' axis
The 'myself' axis starts with four stops in the centre of the Park of the Senses. They refer to the self-awareness of individuality of yourself and others. How do you observe individualities that you meet in your life? In the mirror stripes you see your own face mixed up with parts of somebody else: your own self is partly like and party unlike the other one. Your olfactory sense conveys the impartible individuality of smell as an integral experience. Walking along the paths of the maze is a general experience of life. The stop 'life and death' reminds you of the polarities of life that step-by-step develop the human self.
Development
In 1967 the artist and teacher Hugo Kükelhaus presented his 'stops for developing your senses' as a part of the German contribution to the world exhibition in Montreal. After a travelling exhibition through many European cities, 'experience fields' with reproductions and further developments of his exhibits were installed in different places – amongst others also in the Park of the Senses in Badenweiler.
