"People Connector" is an interactive art installation focused on a "stele-turtle" inspired by past Asian artworks, but re-interpreted in a completely contemporary manner.

With "People Connector", Alexanor has designed a performative installation that actually creates in real time what it is representing: namely the increasing easiness for individuals to communicate not only with their close friends and relatives but also to widen the span of their relations and, in doing so, to gain more personal autonomy and relational capital.

The "stele-turtles" that may be admired in China and Vietnam evoke a world structured by a cosmic order into which human achievements are eternally registered on majestic steles (the turtle is the symbol of the cosmos with its flat belly representing the flat and square earth, while its curved carapace represents the celestial dome).

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But we are no more in the era of static and rigid Medias as the steles' stone, but at a time of mobile and dynamic Medias exemplified by the multiple electronic screens which surround us. We are no more in the epoch of clan belongings that we have not chosen and that impose their order on us. With the social networks, we are building a new type of tribes which we are freely becoming members of, according to our specific concerns and across the world over.

Thus "People Connector" illustrates both the links that humankind keeps with its ancestors and the iconic images of its past and the links which are today emerging between the multiple world citizens thanks to the web.
In the "People Connector" stele, a large electronic screen with rounded corners associates the traditional steles' shape with the smartphones' shape of today. Visitors can display on this screen messages commemorating their visit and address them to their friends and family to wish them the best.

This votive dimension reminds the one that can be observed in some Japanese Shinto temples where one can write down a trace of his visit on a wooden tablet along with wishes of happiness to theirs close friends and relatives.
So "People Connector" evokes the movement from a religious world, where one prays to ask the divine blessing to reach ones' relatives, towards a profane and secularized world, where one sends a postcard, a mail, or a tweet, to share with friends the pleasure of a touristic or cultural inspiring visit.

The focus of "People Connector" is not only the stele-turtle with its screen but also its larger context including the visitors taking selfies of themselves and creating a playful recursive "mise en abime" or "Droste" effect.