Abstract
Can shared experience and dialogue on social touch be orchestrated in playful smart public spaces? In smart city public spaces, in which physical and virtual realities are currently merging, new forms of social connections, interfaces and experiences are being explored. Within art practice, such new connections include new forms of affective social communication with additional social and sensorial connections to enable and enhance empathic, intimate experience in playful smart public space. This chapter explores a novel design for shared intimate experience of playful social touch in three orchestrations of ‘Saving Face’, in different cultural and geographical environments of smart city (semi-) public spaces, in Beijing, Utrecht, Dessau-Berlin. These orchestrations are purposefully designed to create a radically unfamiliar sensory synthesis to disrupt the perception of ‘who sees and who is being seen, who touches and who is being touched’. Participants playfully ‘touch themselves and feel being touched, to connect with others on a screen’. All three orchestrations show that shared experience and dialogue on social touch can be mediated by playful smart cities technologies in public spaces, but rely on design of mediated, intimate and exposed forms of ‘self-touch for social touch’, ambivalent relations, exposure of dialogue and hosting.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Research on experience of affective touch using vibro-tactile technologies showed that telematic, haptic experiences of slow (1–10 cm/s) gentle stroking of the body, such as caressing, are associated by participants with experiences of affection [32].
- 3.
These works can be related to the facial illusion experiment, in which acts of touching a participant’s face are mirrored real-time in acts of touching other peoples’ faces, visible on a monitor in front of the participant. As a result, afterwards, participants confuse their own faces with faces that were touched, visible on the monitor [34, 35].
- 4.
Related to this artistic research, mirror neuron brain activity while seeing others (painfully) being touched have shown to evoke participants’ sensory, social and emphatic connections and vicarious perception [37].
- 5.
Engineering discomfort within public performance, of intimate social touch experience, has shown that participants need to know that they can leave at all times [42].
- 6.
Orchestrations of Saving Face were shown at 56th Venice Art Biennale—China Pavilion 2015; Connecting Cities Network Berlin 2015; Museum BCAC Beijing 2016; TASIE 3rd Art and Science Exhibition and Symposium Beijing 2012; Festival aan de Werf Utrecht, Netherlands 2012; Holland Festival/De Balie Amsterdam 2015; ‘Play Perform Participate’ University Utrecht 2015; ISEA Istanbul and Istanbul Art Biennale 2011; European EIC ICT labs: ‘Mediated presence group’ 2012; Conference and Masterclass ‘Wireless Stories’ 2012.
- 7.
The Actors’ participation exposed to the Spectators can be described as ‘performative’. Instead of referring to the notion on performance as a form of ‘role-playing’, performativity is, in this context, considered to be a repetitive act designed for public spaces, to share reflection and social engagement [45].
- 8.
In this way, each Virtual Persona exists of data traces generated by many caressing acts. The last portrait layer contains 50% of the previous portrait, to enhance the Actor’s self-recognition and connection. Colours of skin merge, but the last colour is dominant.
- 9.
Presented by Connecting Cities Network, European infrastructure of urban screens and media facades for artistic content, http://connectingcities.net/, last accessed 2019/2/27.
- 10.
The orchestration was presented as part of the opening ceremony of the BCAC Beijing Culture and Art Centre.
- 11.
While the opening day is very busy, the days after a few people step into the gallery. In the streets, throughout all days, people keep stopping to read the text on the window, watch the video documentation and to watch the screen with the transforming Virtual Personae.
- 12.
Due to this accessible character and many people participating, the exhibition period was pro-longed.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Prof. Caroline Nevejan, Susa Pop and Public Art Lab Berlin and Connecting Cities Network for their inspirational contribution and support.
Saving Face [9] was developed by Lancel/Maat (Karen Lancel, Hermen Maat) as an art work, artistic research and case study (http://www.lancel.nl/work/saving-face/).
The work was generously supported by Media Fund, Mondriaan Fonds, Festival aan de Werf Utrecht, MediaFonds@Sandberg, Cultural Consulate Beijing, BCAF Beijing, Beam Systems Amsterdam, Dutch Embassy Berlin, SICA NLTR 400. It was technically developed in collaboration with Sylvain Vriens, Tim Olden, Matthijs ten Berge, Mart van Bree, Beamsystems, using Kyle McDonald and Jason Saragih open source Facetracker library.
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Lancel, K., Maat, H., Brazier, F. (2020). Saving Face: Shared Experience and Dialogue on Social Touch, in Playful Smart Public Space. In: Nijholt, A. (eds) Making Smart Cities More Playable. Gaming Media and Social Effects. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9765-3_9
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