The Mediterranean sea
A salty bridge between 3 continents. Between two oceans. Between peace and war, freedom and human suffering. Sanctuary and terror, Leisure and turmoil.
Human beings share these waters. Bathe during warm summers, travel along sandy coastlines, Sail in search for fish shoals and adventure, Board spectacular cruise-ships, escaping gray skies and cold winds, Step waist deep into ice-cold water hours before dawn, holding a child. Board a rickety boat that the smugglers found. Find a way across, or stay forever. Land borders seem to get tighter. Fences are raised, gates are being barbed. Crossing the Mediterranean is the only chance for assylum.
According to Medcruise (Association of Mediterranean cruise ports) – In the year 2016, 24.7 million people were traveling the Mediterranean aboard leisure cruise-ships. During that same year 5,143 refugees perished or went missing in these same waters. The stories are drifting away, washed in the river of news and entertainment. Each picture, each video is a pebble, trown into a bouldery pond.
Missing Migrants Project – Mediterranean situation
UNHCR – Mediterranean spotlight
These four sculptures are yearly representations of the Mediterranean waters. The “water surface” is created in Processing using a “Perlin-Noise” terrain generation.
Perlin-Noise is an algorithm that “smooths out” randomness in order to create a more organic and realistic distribution.
The main parameters of the algorithm are “Amplitude” and “Amount”. Amplitude - the range of the terrain’s “height”. Amount - the distribution of the terrain, or how “noisy” it is. In each surface, the Amplitude is determined by monthly numbers from both of the datasets. Incorporating equal weights for monthly numbers of passengers in the cruise-ships and of refugee fatalities. The Amount, or noisiness, is determined by monthly percentage of the refugees and the passengers out of the total yearly number. Another number is then added to the Amount - a yearly percentage of the Mediterranean casualties, out of the global number of missing refugees. It is a pretty steady 60%. The surfaces were made in the CNC router-mill.
Each yearly surface is then being used as a bedplate for a 3D printed cruise-ship. 3D printers must print on a very flat surface in order to print each layer precisely on-top of the previous one. The subtle “ripples and waves” cause the printing to malfunction and deform.