WIth the project ACD Cicada, ActiveCreativeDesign is starting a study of archetypes, including those attributed to the notion of South. The project features a strong symbol of the south territories, the cicada, which here becomes the means to explore the information flow issued from the social network Twitter. The song of the Cicada leaves its imprint both on landscapes and on the memories we keep of this landscapes. The project implements this collective image by staging four of these insects arranged individually in digital screens, each of them completed by an individual speaker integrated into the wall of the exhibition. Each Cicada is flying, and the combination of the four insects wings produces an effect very familiar to the public. On the bottom of each screen, some messages scrolls so fast that they seem impossible to read. But unexpectedly, an insect alights abruptly and begins to sing this music so particular of the southern territories. A message is then displayed continuously, for a time sufficient to be read by the public. All the messages are issued from instant research on Twitter, performed in real time using keywords from the exhibition thematics. Without censorship or filtering, these messages build piece by piece a contemporary vision of the concept of south, a kind of collective unconscious that meets the ancestral archetype of the cicada.

• published: 04 Jun 2012
• views: 280