The island complex of Cyclades, which belongs to the South Aegean Sea, has formed a particular imagery over time, as it has been gradually transformed into a vacation destination by its one-dimensional touristic development.
We will try to detect the mechanisms that cause conversions of identity of a place, as well as the point in time at which a cluster of islands, in this case, ceases to maintain elements of its original state and begins to mutate. This process generates conflicts between the different identities of a place. This research deals with the space, time and subjects involved in the vacation process. The following dipoles are set as filters: artificial - authentic, traveler - villager, visualization of symbols - folklore elements.
The aim of this research is the kaleidoscopic presentation of data about the vacation landscape in the Cyclades today and the historicalmetadata that describe them, in order to deconstruct the imagery of the Cycladic islands into its elements. We record pieces of data, statistics, images and parameters from the current vacation practices in the Cyclades as well as images from a previous -or parallel- life on these islands, which are presented as metadata that describe the evolution into vacation hotspots. The research is developed in juxtaposition, in the form of a catalogue, gathering evidence and comments on different topics that function as prisms on the issue.
The documentation of an Eclectic Atlas of the South Aegean -in the case of the Cyclades- is a synthetic process. We followed a sequence of research steps, ranging from the collection of material to its classification into thematic units and finally, the production of theoretical texts.