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 by Martina Teigeiro, Verónica Sabat, and Cristina Planas, the project draws from their personal experiences as 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.