Unsettled
Unsettled is an interactive art installation that explores the dynamics of human and marine migration as a vital force flowing through both bodies and natural systems. Developed in Barcelona, the project draws from the personal experiences of three Latin American migrant women to investigate how the unfamiliar transforms and weaves itself into a new environment. The installation creates a poetic parallel between these human trajectories and the biological migrations of marine organisms in the Mediterranean, presenting the ocean as a fluid, borderless metaphor for a shared condition of life.
The work functions as a living system that reacts organically to the audience’s presence through a hybrid of art, science, and digital technology. A central suspended sculpture, equipped with sensors and fog generators, simulates a breathing organism that observes and reacts to visitors. This immersive environment is further enriched by laser beams and videomapping that symbolize the tension of contact, expanding or contracting to represent acceptance or rejection, while a quadraphonic soundscape blends ocean recordings with fragments of migrant interviews. By intertwining scientific knowledge with sensory experience, Unsettled makes the invisible processes of adaptation and coexistence tangible, ultimately encouraging empathy and a deeper reflection on what it means to negotiate space, identity, and belonging.
Martina Teigeiro, Verónica Sabat, and Cristina Planas | ΕS/
Martina Teigeiro, Verónica Sabat, and Cristina Planas are a trio of Latin American migrant women based in Spain. Their collaborative practice operates at the intersection of art, science, and digital media, often exploring migration as a universal force that transcends geopolitical and social boundaries. By integrating scientific insights from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) with interactive technologies like Arduino, Processing, and quadraphonic sound, they created this immersive environment that translate complex biological and social data into sensory narratives. Their project, Unsettled, seeks to make the invisible processes of adaptation, coexistence, and belonging tangible through a poetic language of light, sound, and movement.