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OIL COMPASS v 2.0 is a component of Protei and core of its navigation artificial intelligence. It is interactive interface, allowing viewers to discover global real-time (in some cases hacked) data of oil tankers traffic, oil spills and other sea pollution and their distribution with ocean's currents.

It has three roles within the Protei project: 1) Educational/Didactic - informing people about past and present spills and its dangers; 2) Monitoring/Forecasting - through anylasing collected data it is possible to predict the next disaster and 3) Navigational for “Protei” locations - so that we can send Protei where necessary and track fleet’s movement. Its content is created by communities all over the world - people who keep updating “Oil Compass” map with oil, plastic or other sea pollution in their regions.

Exhibited installation “Oil Compass v2.0” takes the real time environmental data visualization which becomes a crucial component of the piece, allowing people to interact with it and discover oil and radioactive spills together with plastic pollution, raising awareness of their distribution all over the world by ocean currents. It is based on online databases and collected data. It visualises real time data of oil tankers marine traffic and position of oil rigs, thus advocating of data transparency.

The projection-based installation is made with open source programming language VVVV. Microsoft Kinect is used to track gestures enabling viewers to unravel visualised data with their hands, thus “spilling” virtual oil. It is a comment on our consumerism culture - demonstrating that a lot of unnecessary products and packaging we tend to buy requires a large proportion of oil as a ingredient and a power/energy for production.