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Kristallbett

A dense field that gives way to visitors

Place
Westfälische Salzwelten, Bad SassendorfBad Sassendorf
Period
2026

Catalogue no. 2026.00.207

Studio Dossier PDF

Document 2026.10.060 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Kristallbett by Tobias Post – A dense field that gives way to visitors
Tobias Post · Kristallbett · Digital real-time graphics · 2026

The entire field is computed on the graphics card: quartzes, needles, cubes, octahedra and hopper crystals stand together in druses, each scene with a different mixture of forms, sizes and distributions.

The crystals do not give way physically, they give way through growth. When an object approaches, they withdraw into the ground and lean away; once it has passed, they grow back up by themselves. A touch makes them disappear very quickly all around; wait a moment and they grow back up from the inside outwards. Only very rarely does one tear loose and shatter.

A dense crystal bed is no invention in Bad Sassendorf: in the ground beneath the Hellweg lies grown salt, crystal upon crystal. The museum itself is about exactly that: the permanent exhibition “Das weiße Wunder” at the Westfälische Salzwelten leads into underground vaults full of crystals that formed more than 250 million years ago, shows their lattice structure under salt microscopes and tells how brine becomes salt on the Hellweg — Bad Sassendorf is an old salters' town.

“Kristallbett” can be experienced at the Ferromone family festival “Farbexplosion” at the Westfälische Salzwelten, Bad Sassendorf – on Saturday, 17 October 2026, 6 to 10 pm.

Placement in the post-digital model of positing

The crystal is itself a positing: a form that grows according to rules — edge, face, axis. Here it is not only the gaze that posits, but movement in space: whoever comes closer takes the form's stand away from it, whoever walks on gives it back. Where the Farbexplosion series dissolves form into the contourless, it runs the other way round here — out of the flat it grows back into form.

Videos

1
  • CrystalsGrowthTouch

    Kristallbett – Walkthrough

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