A jellyfish has no ears or eyes or nose and no brain or heart! They do not even have a head. Their body is almost totally made of water and is soft having no bones at all. Jellyfish are invertebrate animals because they do not have a spine or backbone.
My Idea
In my opinion, touch is a shock that can be comforting. When my skin brush across someone else’s, I feel an electric shock traveling up my nerves. This tingling sensation gives me goosebumps and a strong emotion of excitement. The tremors running through my body sounds like an alluring melody sang in high-pitch vocals. At the same time, the tremor resembles a million fire ants crawling up my four limbs, constantly biting me at every millisecond. The result is fear, followed by numbness and the gradual transition to desensitization. I perceive desensitization as a climax of an emotional responsive state when I no longer feel anything through touch – when touch becomes incapable, thus intangible.
However, the desire to touch and to be touch is innate in us. We seek for comfort when we are shock and we seek for shock when we are in comfort. This cycle continues endlessly.
When touch reaches a climax, it can only repeat itself.
In a virtual world, in separate spaces, we are limited to touch through our physical boundaries. We can only make use of our visual and auditory senses along with the aid of different types of programmed sensors to guide us through our exchange in touch.
Concept Statement
Something in another space triggered movement in my space through my sense of sight. In blue, yellow and red led, the colours fuses together at different combinations of flashing intervals to produce green, purple and orange. The flashing light represents the pulsing of a heart that a jellyfish doesn’t have. The pulsing heart dies and revives almost immediately with every single stimulation from another spaces that intrudes my space, causing different sets of movement running through my body.
I intend to use about 6 sets of 3 led lights – red, yellow, blue, scattered randomly around the flares of a white dress. Nine led lights will be sewn on the front and nine on the back of a dress. Each led will be connected to a Lilypad that will be sewn onto the abdomen portion of the dress. There will be a motion sensor sewn to the chest area which will detect my movement as I wave my hands across it causing the lights on the flares of my dress to light up.
Sketch of Jellyfish dressSide viewFront viewBack viewMood board
In my opinion, touch is a shock that can be comforting. When my skin brush across someone else’s, I feel an electric shock traveling up my nerves. This tingling sensation gives me goosebumps and a strong emotion of excitement. The tremors running through my body sounds like an alluring melody sang in high-pitch vocals.
At the same time, the tremor can make one fearful. Tremors can come in the form of a million fire ants crawling up my four limbs, constantly biting me at every millisecond, or a numbing shock from the sting of a jellyfish while swimming in the cool embrace of the waters. The result is fear, followed by numbness and the gradual transition to desensitization. I perceive desensitization as a climax of an emotional responsive state when I no longer feel anything through touch – when touch becomes incapable, thus intangible.
A fire ant
A Jellyfish
However, the desire to touch and to be touch is innate in us. We seek for comfort when we are shock and we seek for shock when we are in comfort. This cycle continues endlessly.
When touch reaches a climax, it can only repeat itself.
In a virtual world, in separate spaces, we are limited to touch through our physical boundaries. We can only make use of our visual and auditory senses along with the aid of different types of programmed sensors to guide us through our exchange in touch.
The Narrative I envision:
The concept of my narrative revolves around the theme of ‘Touch’ in a futuristic context. Imagine, in a futuristic world, how will touch be like? As science advances along with the scientific knowledge and craftsmanship learnt through biomimicry, we venture into the realms of technology and eventually use the craft to replace the role of Mother nature. These effects are already evident now: rats can be made to glow in the dark, cellulose can grow into clothes, clothes will open up in vents when we sweat.
In addition, we can change our environment to suit our needs: plants are watered at regular timings with an irrigation system, we can control the temperature of our environment with the invention of air-condition, we can modify the weather so that rain happen through cloud seedling. Our environment is no longer the same and we can expect these external changes to reflect in us too. We do not need to talk to communicate our ideas across to one another. We can interact across different spaces. Maybe we can even interact in our dreams. We look different. We take on different personas inspired from the skills we learnt from mother nature.
Plants are watered at regular timings
we can control the temperature of our environment with the invention of air-conditionwe can modify the weather so that rain happen through cloud seedling
We interact with each other while we are in separate cubicles through seeing and hearing. We move in short actions, like a programmed machine running through a series of causes and effects stimulated by what we see and hear. Somewhere, there is light. Somewhere this light causes movement in another space through sight. Somewhere the movement bring about sound. Somewhere, there is sound. Somewhere this sound causes movement…and the cycle repeats.
Before we go into a summarized research on “Telematic Dreaming” with reference from ‘Virtual Bodies‘, I would like to address a few terms: the first, second, third and fourth space is defined by the local space, the foreign/ remote space, the virtual/ electronic space (non-edited) and the virtual/ electronic space (edited), respectively.
“Telematic Dreaming”, by Paul Sermon, is an installation made within the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). This installation enables two participants to engage in a strong sense of intimacy and shared presence in the third space, where they lie on beds in remote locations.
The set-up for “Telematic Dreaming” is as follow:
Two beds are located in separate locations, one in an illuminated space (first space) and another in a blacked out space (second space).
A camera is situated directly above the bed in the first space, sending out live video image of a person (local) lying on a bed to a video projector above the other bed in the second space, which projects the image onto the bed with another person (foreign) lying on it.
A second camera next to the video projector sends a live video image of the projection of person (local) beside person (foreign) back to a series of monitors surrounding the bed in the first space.
From page 216 of ‘Virtual Bodies’,
Seeing is feeling.
In “Telematic Dreaming”, two participants are not allowed physical touch and can only feel each other using their sense of sight. However, I can’t help but ask the question: Can we touch with our eyes?
Also, from page 216 of ‘Virtual Bodies’,
Digital design oscillates between the physical and the virtual, just as it oscillates between the reflective and the transparent.
The telepresent projection surface acts as a mirror that reflects one person (local) within the reflection of another person (foreign). At the same time, these reflections forces participants to form relationships with each other through a transparent touch – a touch that cannot be felt by their corporeal body.
I think; therefore I am.
Cartesian dualism is a belief that there are two kinds of reality: material and immaterial. This principle is supported by René Descartes, a French philosopher, who believes that the body and the mind are separate from each other. There is an increasing acceptance of the principle of Cartesian dualism where people believe that the virtual body is disembodied and unrelated to the physical world. In ‘Telematic Dreaming’, it is easy to assume that a projected image is merely a reflection of reality and not reality itself. While it is a fact that the projected image appears to be a reflection of reality, it is superficial to say that the projected image is separated from reality completely.
I seldom feel without thinking, or think without feeling.
We cannot touch with our eyes but we can materialise what we see as the feeling of being touched or touching another. This belief is further emphasized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, who was quoted saying, “I seldom feel without thinking, or think without feeling.” The visual images registered in our minds can be led by our thoughts to be associated with certain emotions which may build up to become feelings.
Take for example,
Man presents a rose
I see a man presents a rose to me,
I am happy,
I feel loved.
Similarly,
Man flirting with a woman
I see the man who I love flirting with another woman,
I am angry,
I feel my body heat up.
As the principle attributes of the mind and the body does not exclude each other, we cannot refer to the principle of Cartesian dualism to explain that the virtual body is different from the corporeal body. Likewise we cannot assume that the virtual body is separate from the corporeal body.
From page 217 of ‘Virtual Bodies’,
But Sermon deliberately avoids providing an audio link so as to concentrate attention on the meeting of two bodies separated in real space but virtually conjoined: “human interaction was reduced to its simplest essence: touch, trust, vulnerability.”
To further emphasize on the visual aspect of this project, Sermon prevents participants from communicating with each other by removing the audio function from the live video. This way he portrayed human interaction in its essential form of touch, trust and vulnerability, relying solely on sight for the success of his work.
Meeting of two bodies separated in real space but virtually conjoined
While participants place themselves in vulnerable positions as they expose their emotions to each other through actions and sight, they can be selective with what they want to believe in. In the case where a man in the second space punches a projected image of a woman in the first space, the woman can choose to close her eyes or deny the act of violence and brutality from the third space such that she no longer believes that the image of the woman in the third space is herself.
From page 218 of ‘Virtual Bodies’,
the distinction between materiality and immateriality in the technology is movement: as moving beings people take on an alternative materiality, while objects become immaterial in their inertia
Rather than choosing to believe that the virtual body is separated from the corporeal body and is incapable of materiality, Suzan Kozel, one of Britain’s leading dance and technology artists, chooses to believe that an alternative materiality exist in the virtual body as the emotions felt through the mind can stimulate the body to react accordingly – just as when she held out her hand in the first space, to ‘receive’ the rose that was presented to her from a man in the second space. She believes that the only difference between virtual (mind) and reality (body) is movement – while she exerts materiality in the first space by moving her hand, she appears to be exerting an alternative materiality in the third space (as we see only an image of her and not her physical body) and the rose (object) appear immaterial in the third space (as the rose is intangible to her in all of the spaces since the rose does not exist physically in the first and third space and she does not exist physically in the second space to be able to really touch the rose – they are on parallel planes).
To conclude, Sermon’s “Telematic Dreaming” explores into the materiality and immateriality realm of touch where participants interact on a psychological/ spiritual level by using their minds to develop emotions and feelings of touch. If I were to appreciate “Telematic Dreaming” like how I would appreciate a painting, I feel that ‘movement’ in performance is the subject and the use of ‘third space’ and ‘sight’ is the medium, the vehicle that brings us the performance.
And yes, I am terrible at summarising because this post is definitely more than a thousand words.
