Do You Feel Connected?

The installation “Do you feel connected?” is a real-time data visualization built of 19 separate beams of light, each of which represents a specific value such as love, wisdom, creativity, safety, kindness, and empathy. Together they make a whole, a palisade reacting to a constant flow of data uploaded online. This way, the installation represents a collective of connected people. Together we make a whole. 

The installation is a direct reference to Stanisław Lem’s “Summa technologiae,” in which this world-class science-fiction writer poses a question of how one could imagine an object of sociocybernetics. The nineteen elements, nineteen values, constituting the installation, symbolize the year of 2019, which marks the outbreak of the pandemics and the moment the world was brought to a halt. This is also the time when the opportunity has arisen to build the world anew on the foundations of selected values. 

How it works?

Each of the nineteen beams represents a specific value. Each of the values has its own hashtag (#love #solidarity). Each time a specific hashtag is published online, the installation absorbs the data and projects it as a light signal on the beam of light representing a given value. This way, what we can observe in real time, in the physical world, and in a visual form, is an ongoing discussion about what connects us.

The customized software has turned into the installation “Do You Feel Connected?” into a visualization of data in real time. This one-of-its-kind responsive form, a palisade, allows for observing the presence of the selected nineteen values online and the interactions between them.

Hashtags

Selected hashtags represent values. We selected them based on the concept of H. Schwartz, a social psychologist and intercultural researcher. Schwartz’s concept of value combines knowledge from the areas of philosophy, psychology and sociology.

Based on selected values (from Schwartz) infuture.institute, we conducted a survey. We asked the question “Which values are most important to you?”. The results of the survey showed which values are the most important for respondents.

The highest tube corresponds to the value that respondents are the most important. On the first place they choose „Freedom” (67,9%). The survey has been conducted on polish respondents, in June 2021.

Team

infuture.institute is a forecasting institute, which defines and describes major trends and indicates their consequences. The institute monitors and analyses all factors contributing to fundamental changes in a given category in a specific timeframe (short-, mid-, and long-term). With the aim of researching the future, the institute was established by Natalia Hatalska and today cooperates with futurists, trendwatchers, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, culture experts, and other scientists (Olga Jankowska, Zuzanna Bonecka, Marek Gawdzik, Monika Jaskulska, Aleksandra Kulińska, Aleksandra Trapp).

In this project the infuture.institute has cooperated with Marta Flisykowska, an artist, researcher, and lecturer, which co-runs the Experimental Design Studio at the FineArts Academy in Gdańsk. Her artistic projects were exhibited at the major art fairsand festivals (including Salone del Mobile 2017), Paris, Munich, Las Vegas, or Beijing.