#12OCT

Patricia Cadavid H.
Interactive Installation, 2016
Interface Cultures 

#12OCT reflects about certain aspects of the past and present of Ibero-American colonial panorama.

The paradigmatic date of October 12 reminds us that in 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived to America for the first time.

The Spanish state officially celebrates the beginning of the colonization of America as the day of national holiday or Hispanicity Day, by holding a sumptuous military parade. In the colonized countries of Latin America this date is known among other names, as Day of the Race or Day of Indigenous Resistance.

This interactive installation makes a critical approach of the controversy of these different connotations, with the use of simple and open devices to the public, using social networks like a collective thinking sensor on both sides of the Atlantic.

It utilizes data visualization as a physical form with a representation of a world map provided in a container with water and three ships of proportional size symbolizing the caravels led by Christopher Columbus.

Two engines direct the flow of the water from a continent to the other, depending on the reading of the real-time data that are generated with the search of specific hashtags on twitter.

Exhibition at: IC at ars electronica 2016, Linz, Austria