On/Off

The permanent exhibition “On-Off-the interactive exposition about the power grid” has been designed for the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology.
Energy and energy production affect us all - visitors can approach the topic in an informative and haptic way.

In the future electricity generation no longer will focus on a particular source of energy but will split into a vast number of alternative possibilities, in this context we talk about ”energy islands”. 

In consequence, each person can become a small island, a small individual power plant.

Different islands represent different ways to generate energy and point out the relationship with the environment and society.

The exhibition includes nine islands, where the “sources” and “drops” of electricity are explained: “Sources” are usually power plants that feed power into the grid (for example hydropower, wind power, solar energy, caloric power plants, alternative energy sources…) “Drops” are the users that consume electric energy in the household-every one of us.

The whole society lives inside a superior power system-, in varying degrees it covers the world. Parting from the control centre, we stretch a symbolic net over the exhibition, over each island and each chapter, in this way we demonstrate the connection of all elements among each other.

The whole exhibition is a sole spatial “Hands on”. It’s a game “powered” by the visitors, it shows the interactions and explains in an educational way our significance in the energy balance. 

Our objective is an equilibrium of supply and demand, blackouts should definitively be avoided.