*Kachinas of Decline*

by Michael Bielicky & Kamila B. Richter

www.gardenoferroranddecay.net/kachinasofdecline

Kachinas of Decline is a modern dynamic interactive Mural driven by real time Twitter and stock exchange data. In the Pueblo and Hopi culture Kachina is a kind of spirit who operates in the natural world as well in the cosmos. In our project we have created Kachinas of our time that have a similar function to the ancient ones.

The sequences of animated narrative Kachina units are displayed in the web and in a form of projection either indoor or outdoor. The collage like scenes are fed by the permanent flow of Twitter statements regarding critical events like for example natural catastrophes, ecological disasters, financial crisis, health damages or poverty relating to local (New Mexico) and more global (USA) happenings of our time.

The Kachinas of Decline is an innovative narrative format that could be defined as Data Driven Narrative Game as well as Real Time Generated Interactive Movie. Beside the user and the machine, there are two additional story generators or narrators coming from the live world of Twitter and stock exchange.

"The work problematizes the relationship between the individual and global events. Kachinas of Decline function as an allegory of the impotence of the citizen when confronted with superordinate facts, which have reached such a degree of abstraction that they are not comprehensible or modifiable anymore, although they are real and determine everybody’s life." - Franziska Nori