Tech-free Holidays: the Collective Counsciousness through images

Introduction

What kind of imaginary is linked to the tech-free holidays? Which are the landscapes that best represent them? To answer these questions we have been analysing all the images related to these places, the kind of package they offer and their logos. Each place has its own evocative imaginary and all the images found have been organised in a grid (see the image below).

The images highlight the main tech-free holidays locations: the caribbean paradise, the desert, the woods up on the mountains (see the image below).

To recreate the feeling of the Carabbean Paradise, the desert and the woods, all the images representing each holiday destination category have been merged together using a software called Autopano. The final result is a new and unique image made by overlapping all the images for each type of holiday. The final image suggest a more complete visualisation of each landscape (see the three images below).

The logos analysis aims to show the whole imaginary linked to the theme, comparing all the logos in a grid and juxtaposing their different nature: from the most illustrative logo to the most elegant one, from handmade typography to stretched images (see the image below).

How to read the visualization

The visualisation is made by 3x3 squared modules where each module has its own colour assigned. 80 squares in total refer to 80 evocative images of the 80 detox holidays destinations found through the research. Images are not presented in the order they show up but they have been reassembled by linking them to the kind of place, as if we tried to recreate a birds-eye view where all the most representative elements can be identified: the blue from the sea, the brown from the earth and the green from the woods.

How it has been done

Once downloaded the images from the link in the dataset reporting all the Digital Detox-related places, they have been resized using a Photoshop batch. The same batch has been applied to create a mosaic effect for each image and turn it into a 9-modules square (3 per side) to estimate the chromatic dominance. The final images have been then put in a grid to make them easily comparable.

Findings

What we realised from the images analysis is that the detox holidays are commonly related to the idea of a locus amoenus, which brings the visitor in a peaceful and chilled atmosphere. Sea, mountains and deserts are the most representative places for the tech-free vacation. Sometimes unique and sometimes bizarre are also the brand images representing the destinations.

Metadata

Timestamp: 11/12/2014 - 19/12/2014

Data source: Digital Detox Holidays, Tripadvisor

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