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Hosting Social Touch in Public Space of Merging Realities

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Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation (ArtsIT 2019, DLI 2019)

Abstract

Is human hosting essential to social touch in the public space of merging realities? This paper explores the role of hosting in art and design for mediating social touch in public space, social robotics, virtual reality and tele-matic environments. The question of whether human hosting is essential to social touch was the focus of three experiments held during performance of artistic orchestrations designed for social touch in public space for which the effects of different hosting designs have been analyzed. These internationally presented orchestrations, Saving Face (2012) and Master Touch (2013), purposefully disrupt and re-orchestrate multi-sensory connections in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways, to evoke shared reflection and shared sense making in public space, mediated by a host.

Saving Face was orchestrated internationally in museums, urban public spaces and theatres, including; 56th Venice Biennale 2015; Connecting Cities Network Ber-lin/Dessau 2013; 3th TASIE Art-Science exhibition, Science & Technology Museum Beijing 2013; Beijing Culture & Art Center BCAC 2015-2016. Master Touch was orchestrated at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 2013. This paper extends the multi-sensory interaction model for social touch described in (Lancel et al. 2019e) to explicitly include the role of a host. The question this paper addresses is whether the host needs to be human.

This paper calls for future design of disrupted social touch in merging realities to consider hosting processes of shared sense making. Such design should facilitate new forms of reciprocal embodied interaction, that support descriptive self-disclosure, dialogue and shared reflection on experience of social touch in merging realities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Saving Face was orchestrated internationally in museums, urban public spaces and theatres, including; 56th Venice Biennale 2015; Connecting Cities Network Berlin/Dessau 2013; 3th TASIE Art-Science exhibition, Science & Technology Museum Beijing 2013; Beijing Culture&Art Center BCAC 2015–2016. Master Touch was orchestrated at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 2013.

  2. 2.

    Wang for example describes experiments in which stories are shared between a story teller and a distant listener. It was shown that touching the listener on ’emotional high points’ in the story, enhanced the listener’s emotionally connection ‘with the emotional view point of the story-teller’.

  3. 3.

    Interaction is explored in direct (f.e. through prosthetics) and indirect corporeal interaction (between actors and spectators), or in combination.

  4. 4.

    Examples of interaction design aiming at supporting ‘a perceptual illusion of non-mediation’ of touch can be found in different applications for (combined) virtual and augmented realities and robotics, for gaming design, art, entertainment, training, therapy, sex, gaming, robotics (Erp and Toet 2015, Huisman 2017, Lancel et al. 2019d).

  5. 5.

    Patented artificial skin compositions attempting to evoke experience of presence in the form of perceptual realism, include Cyberskin, Futurotic. http://www.sextoyspro.com/cyberskin.shtml, last accessed 2019/9/25.

  6. 6.

    These design strategies, for example in ‘critical design’, ‘reflective design’, ‘ludic design’, are applied to evoke gaining critical insight in (implicit) value systems, educational purposes, change and transformation and for experience of joyful play.

  7. 7.

    Related to this research, in the domain of neurology, mirror neuron activity of touch is considered to enhance empathy (Ward 2018). In specific cases of ‘mirror touch synaesthesia’, precarious touch experience is perceived stronger if the spectators’ neurological systems show ‘lower thresholds’ (Ward 2018, Martin 2018).

  8. 8.

    Instead of referring to the notion of performance as a form of ‘role-playing’, performativity (Butler 1990) is, in this context, considered to be a repetitive act designed for public spaces, to share reflection on social engagement.

  9. 9.

    In the orchestrations by Lancel and Maat, interaction by the performance hosts is performed by the artists themselves, trained volunteers or fellow workers.

  10. 10.

    The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam collection of digitized portraits can be found on: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search?q=portraits&ii=0&p=1, last accessed 2019/9/25.

  11. 11.

    In Berlin-Dessau, the Saving Face orchestration was performed during two days at festival Connecting Cities Network, curated by Public art Lab Berlin, September 2013. http://connectingcities.net/project/saving-face, last accessed 2019/9/25.

  12. 12.

    In Beijing, the Saving Face orchestration was performed at Beijing Culture and Art Centre (BCAC), for a period of 10 days during December 2015–January 2016. Due to success, the period was prolonged with a month.

  13. 13.

    These texts also functioned to solve disrupted communication due to a language-barrier.

  14. 14.

    Master Touch was performed at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam at both the Jubilee Night of the Rijksstudio (responsible for digitizing the portrait collection) and the Museum Night, November 2013.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Prof. J. Van Erp and Dr. G. Huisman for discussions and Prof. Dr. M. Nevejan for earlier contributions. This paper is based on a decade of artistic and scientific research and artistic performances. The authors are grateful to all of those who have contributed to this work, mentioned on the websites relating to each orchestration. Please see:

Lancel/Maat (2000–2019), https://www.lancelmaat.nl/work/;

Lancel/Maat (2009) Tele_Trust, http://www.lancelmaat.nl/work/tele-trust/;

Lancel/Maat (2012) Saving Face, http://lancelmaat.nl/work/saving-face/;

Lancel/Maat (2014) EEG KISS, http://www.lancelmaat.nl/work/e.e.g.-kiss/.

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Lancel, K., Maat, H., Brazier, F. (2020). Hosting Social Touch in Public Space of Merging Realities. In: Brooks, A., Brooks, E. (eds) Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation. ArtsIT DLI 2019 2019. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 328. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53294-9_14

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