»The user should dive into complex systems and see not only facts but also how facts and situations interconnect with each other, in the hope of helping to realize how sometimes political myths distort our reality.«
Friedrich von Borries says »Design is political because it intervenes into the construction of the world«. With this in mind, I started to analyze how ideology works and how design contributes on the use of ideologies as political instruments.
My research starts with philosophy, semiology and psychology. After gathering information and theories on the topic of ideologies and understanding its different functions, I started with the field research doing interviews on different ideological and political positions. My intention was to visualize complex systems that affect our daily life. The ones I choose, are mainly socio-economic problems that have been often approached from different ideological perspectives. I visualized these problems to bring clarity and access for better understanding.
I created the concept and prototype for a small interactive installation that consists of a data visualization in an abstract form, an interactive informative platform and illustrative information in augmented reality.
The data visualization projection is the result of transforming data sets into graphic moving elements done with Touchdesigner. The data sets recollect scores on political freedom with health systems, economy and government transparency around the world.
The interactive platform is a website coded with java script and the D3 library, intended to visualize a network of »good intentions and its consequences«. Groups of information on different economic daily-life problems are placed as a galaxy. Users can click and see what could happen after some particular »well-intended« political decision is taken and how people can be affected by it. I want to show what people don’t see, how topics get connected to each other in a web, and what stories appear behind every economic movement.
Patricia Vidal
Master of Arts Integrated Design
