Tag Archives: touch

Research

Research Critique: Virtual Bodies in the Third Space

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A virtual body is the state of being when inhabiting virtual reality or a virtual environment. The third space refers to a shared electronic social space where the physical and the virtual are blended. This topic is enigmatic and has been open to dispute.

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Paul Sermon’s Telematic Dreaming was originally produced as a commission for the annual summer exhibition curated by the Finnish Ministry of Culture in Kajaani, with support from Telecom Finland, in June 1992.

Paul Sermon’s Telematic Dreaming (1992) turns a bed into the support of high-resolution images that might show a partner, intimately alive although being thousand kilometers away. The light-intense projection of the other results in a remarkable suggestion which turns the touch of the projected body into an intimate action.

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.”

Sermon aims at expanding the senses of the user, while it is obvious that the other cannot really be touched but that only swift, decisive, possibly tenderly reactive movements can experience the suggestion of touch—a moment of contemplation, as many users observed.

My response: The computerisation of human experience is generally thought to diminish the physical and emotional sides of life, yet the in the virtual world of Telematic Dreaming questions of privacy, intimacy and identity were central. Not only the performer but also many members of the public were overwhelmed by their experiences on the other bed.  The installation was paradoxical for not only using technology to provide a forum for experiencing the basics of human intimacy, but for situating this private interaction within a public domain.

Final Project

Project Hyperessay #2: Conclusion

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The objective of the collaborative project Touch was to investigate critical concepts and fundamental artistic concerns inherent in the emerging form of live networked performance in the third space, through creative dance movements, interactive wearables, smart textiles, audio-visual arts and the Critical Response Process (CRP).  

This collaboration between School of Art, Design & Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the School of Arts, Media & Engineering at Arizona State University took place on Thursday, April 21 (SGT) in a third space where the artist Angeline Young and students of ADM performed as a collective body. And the performance was being live broadcasted over the Internet to expand the experience of the networked performance to the global audience despite of the spatial divide.

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My inspiration came from this project called “The Space Between Us” which was a collaborative electronic music and modern dance piece for computationally enhanced dancers and MAX/MSP, a programming language for interactive music and multimedia.

Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msqol0w9NVs

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One of the dancers’ (with the round skirt) costume combined LilyPad components and an XBee (wireless transmitter) together with pressure and flex sensors connected by conductive thread, which detected and transmitted the movements of the dancer to the composer’s laptop, which were then used to generate and control sound within a MAX/MSP environment.

So instead of a dancer’s movements being a slave to the fixed constraints of a pre-composed piece of music, the wireless dance costume put the power of live musical composition in the hands (body) of the dancer, who could explore and improvise new shapes and structures within an otherwise free musical environment. This became the concept for both my costume design and dance performance. 

 

The interactive mechanism of my costume was largely based on this idea. 

 

 

While conceptualising for the idea of the final performance, we had been explicating the concept of “touch” in the third space throughout the first half of the semester by exploring such topics as “the virtual body,” “distributed presence,” “third space,” “biometrics,””sensing garments and smart textiles,””glitch aesthetics,””dance movement” and etc. 

 

Some research critiques that helped me arrive at the final work I produced for the performance:

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This was part of a biomimicry project called braided beaded ball suit which was an emulation of the beautiful symmetry in nature. Artists who created this were very much inspired by the glowing creatures of the deep sea as well as weird formations in the human body to inform new approaches in design. This inspired my costume design of glowing LEDs in front of the background of the black velvet as well as the mesh structure created by wires which resembled vines in the nature. 

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In my research critique of dance performance, Eiko & Koma’s iconoclastic work combined slow and nuanced movement vocabulary with bold theatrical design. Whether performing in a theater or in natural sites outdoors, Eiko & Koma often moved as if they were not human. Although this was not exactly what I imagined my dance movements in the final performance would look like, I did borrow the simpleness and directness from their dance. 

Essentially, dance is a way of communication. Without the fixed constraints of a pre-composed piece of music the artist’s personal narrative is embodied through pure movements – dance in its most pristine form.

Eiko and Koma

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He is a weaver of personal histories through sound, a composer, who conducts and orchestrates the sonic world that is generated by the movement and actions of Angeline and the colony. He carefully layers the sound to coordinate a sense of harmonic affiliation in the third space through the carefully blending of personal histories represented in sound. However, Yuhao’s efforts are often undermined and disrupted by the actions of Charlene and Feliciana. Yuhao seeks to overcome their resistance through mysterious answers from Angeline as to the amorphous and intangible nature of human communication in the third space to create a world of mutual understanding.

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Based on this character sketch, I designed and made my costume which was inspired by the Victorian Era men’s fashion. Most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, the inverness cape is a weatherproof outer coat which was often worn in 1880s London. 

 

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With the costume in progress, I worked on electronic / wearables for incorporation into the piece. There were many possibilities for input sensing, from accelerometers to proximity sensors, and the goal was to create the ideal mapping of input and output, embedded appropriately in the garment or accessory for the performance.

Movement and gesture would be translated into sound. Each character emitted specific kinds of sounds. I spent a big portion of the time on codings especially the radio transmission of data used to generate and control sound within a MAX/MSP environment. We switched from bluetooth wireless to radio wireless as bluetooth had some connection problem with Mac causing the data transmission to be unstable.

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Under the guidance of Naga, I managed to transmit data between two nRF24L01 transceivers with one as the transmitter sending out the data and the other one receiving the data. The transmitter was connected to LilyPad which was sewn onto the costume. The receiver was connected to Randall’s Mac and Max software  extracted data from it to generate sound control.

Final performance

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Touch is not fundamentally about technology. Nor is it an attempt to define a new genre of art practice. It is about what we have been researching and exploring over the course of the semester which is called “the virtual embrace”. It is about experience. You will only know what it means after you experience it. The questions at the start of the project: What is “touch” in the third space?  How does it feel to “touch” without physically touching? How do our digital representations in the third space connect to our corporeal bodies during the “touch”? How has the “virtual embrace” transformed the way in which we engage in social media and digital communications? Maybe only six of us have an answer for ourselves and these answers don’t have to be the same. 

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Project Hyperessay

Project Hyperessay #1: Concept Statement / Narrative Overview

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Touch

What is “touch” in the third space?  How does it feel to “touch” without physically touching? How do our digital representations in the third space connect to our corporeal bodies during the “touch”? How has the “virtual embrace” transformed the way in which we engage in social media and digital communications?  

To get better answers to these questions, we have been explicating the concept of “touch” in the third space throughout the first half of the semester by exploring such topics as “the virtual body,” “distributed presence,” and the “third space.”

The objective of the collaborative project Touch is to investigate critical concepts and fundamental artistic concerns inherent in the emerging form of live networked performance in the third space, through creative dance movements, interactive wearables, smart textiles, audio-visual arts and the Critical Response Process (CRP).  

This collaboration between School of Art, Design & Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the School of Arts, Media & Engineering at Arizona State University is happening on Thursday, April 21 (SGT) in a third space where the artist Angeline Young and students of ADM will perform as a collective body. And the performance will be live broadcasted over the Internet to expand the experience of the networked performance to the global audience despite of the spatial divide.  

 

Proposal_Touch
Touch explores how proximity and distance has reshaped, challenged and transformed the way in which we engage in social relations and human contact.

 

 

Virtual Embrace in the Third Space

“Virtual Embrace” can have many interpretations. It is an entirely new way of negotiating proximity, of sensing the other person, of coordinating the actions, of balancing the scale. As a dancer, I interpret these interactions between artists as an exchange of personal histories, experiences or aspirations expressed through movements and the creation of live audios. 

I discussed in one of my research critiques the idea that the dancer, instead of dancing to the music, became a composer or musician playing the music with her body/costume/space as a musical instrument. The wireless dance costume powered by Arduino Lilypad and motion sensors puts the magic of live musical composition in the hands (body) of the dancer, who can explore and improvise new shapes and structures within an otherwise free musical environment.

As a result, the virtual embrace will mainly happen in the form of a collaborative dance performance. However, it is still unique because the music created by Angeline will be heard by us through the third space. Each of us will react and move differently to the sound based on our own personal experiences and feelings, at the same time creating new audios which add on more layers to the current sound track. Both sides of artists thus are able to “touch” each other through generated sounds. As the process unfolds in time and space, Angeline and we will build a sense of affiliation and mutual understanding. Our dance movements although not pre-choreographed will look in sync and the audios we create through dance will eventually become a harmonious blend of personal narratives.   

 

Research Critique: Costume and Textile

 

Dance in its Most Pristine Form

Without the fixed constraints of a pre-composed piece of music the artist’s personal narrative is embodied through pure movements – dance in its most pristine form.

In my research critique of dance performance, Eiko & Koma’s iconoclastic work combines slow and nuanced movement vocabulary with bold theatrical design. Whether performing in a theater or in natural sites outdoors, Eiko & Koma often move as if they are not human. Although this is not exactly what I imagine our movements will look like, I do like to borrow the simpleness and directness from their dance. Essentially, dance is a way of communication. 

Eiko and Koma
Eiko and Koma

 

Touch is not fundamentally about technology. Nor is it an attempt to define a new genre of art practice. It is about what we have been researching for half of the semester which is called “the virtual embrace”. We hope through this experiment of telematic collaboration, we could have better answers to the amorphous and intangible nature of human communication in the third space.