Nibia

Background

Nibia Sabalsagaray (1949 – 1974) was a Uruguayan literature teacher and social activist, tortured and killed in captivity at the beginning of the last military dictatorship (1973- 1985) in Uruguay.

In 1974, the Military Justice categorised this crime as a suicide by hanging.

Despite the barriers posed by Uruguayan Law 15.848 (Ley de Caducidad), in September 2004 Sabalsagaray’s sister, Stella, petitioned the courts to reclassify her death from suicide to murder and to identify and punish those responsible.

On 29 April 2013, General Miguel Ángel Dalmao was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in prison for Nibia Sabalsagaray’s death.

The piece

Nibia is an interactive installation that questions the relationship between society and its recent past, through the recontextualisation of a particular image.

The work consists of a room, dark, with black walls, with only one entrance, blinded by double black curtains.

Hanging towards the end of the room, there is a projection of Sabalsagaray (an image very well known in Uruguay), in sepia tonalities. Two meters from the projection, there is a wooden stool with a standard lighter on top of it.

If the interactor decides to take the lighter and light it, the picture in the area corresponding to the position of the lighter burns and disappears. It is, however, impossible to burn it completely: a short time after a zone is burnt, the image is reconstructed.

Technical details

The detection and tracking of the flame is done with an infrared camera (either a Wii Remote controller or a PS Eye camera), with a simple blob detection algorithm.

The burning simulation is done by manipulating the pixel values (using an algorithm similar to the burning effect usually present in image-manipulation software), following an upward motion constructed by randomly mixing several paths recorded using a drawing tablet.

All the software was programmed with openframeworks.

Exhibition history

Museum Subte Municipal, September 2010. Montevideo, Uruguay.

Museum of the Memory (Museo de la Memoria), December 2011. Montevideo, Uruguay.