Can I touch you online? Can we measure intimacy?
Does a robot need to give consent? How does your kiss feel in EEG Data?

Artists, researchers, writers, and educators Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat (Studio Lancel/Maat for Art, Technology, Science, Society) are widely recognized as pioneers in exploring experiences of “togetherness” and “trust” within our socio-technical world. Their internationally prize-winning work spans performances, media art installations, participatory projects, video and sound works. Through poetic and visionary “Hybrid Meeting Spaces” and participatory Artistic Social Labs, they propose inclusive more-than-human relations and entangled post-anthropocene ecologies, that evoke ethical dialogue about how technology shapes our shared, embodied experience of intimacy and empathy, isolation and vulnerability, privacy and control, identity, interdependency and trust. Shows: Venice Biennial 2015, Ars Electronica 2019, ZKM Center for media art Karlsruhe, the National museum of China. Awards: TASIE 2019 Art Science Award, EMAP European Program Award, GAAC Global Art & AI Competition Award, NFF Golden Calf nomination 2019. With Publications by Leonardo/Siggraph MITpress; CHI; ArtsIT; ISEA/ISAST; Springer Verlag; IJPADM Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Routledge; and presentations in numerous (key-)lectures. Educational appointments including multiple BA and MA programs. Dr. Lancel's Art & Science PhD at the TU Delft (2023) "Can I touch you online?" presents a new discourse on hybrid reciprocal connections (download).

Artworks. The artists' aesthetic Artistic Social Labs invite the audience as 'co-researchers' of 'Trust-Rituals' and 'Trust-Ecologies': poetic playgrounds and social sculptures inviting for tender yet provocative social experiments. The audience meets via radically reshaped, speculative A.I. brain-, facial-, robotic, wearable, haptic and online systems, to explore intimate, multisensory collective connections that shift embodied boundaries between people, nature and machines. Their participation is traced and portrayed, translated into immersive, audiovisual data-compositions: 'Shared Reflexive DataScapes' (click here) that raise dialogue on how A.I. co-creates our shared memories, and interferes in our sense of trust. Through mediated storytelling across multiple contexts of cultures, gender and ages worldwide, Lancel/Maat's hosted performances and installations have led to transformative personal and collective experience and shared meaning-making of future imaginaries of co-existence.

Research Through the lens of artistic research Lancel/Maat's interdisciplinary practice evolves at the intersection of Feminist theory, Neuropsychology, Neural networks, Phenomenology, Complex A.I. systems and Human Computer Interaction (HCI).
Their multi-disciplinary partnerships have inspired the Art and Design of Ethics and Emotional Well-Being, concerning social (dis)connection and isolation (f.e. through (collective) trauma), in public space; tele-presence and trust; and neurodiversity.

● AWARDS include: 2019 NFF Golden Calf Netherlands Film Festival nomination 'Interactive'; 2019 TASIE Tsinghua University Beijing / Wu Guanzhong International Prize for Art, Science, Innovation; 2017 3d prize European Horizon Program 'BrainHack' at Art Science Galery Dublin; 2018 'Dutch Digital Art Canon' of 20 Media Art works between1960-2000 selected by Li-MA Media Art Platform Amsterdam; 2011 & 2012 Virtueel Platform Amsterdam; 2019 GAAC Global Art & AI Competition Award China.
● SHOWS (click here) include: Venice Biennial 2015; Ars Electronica Festival Linz; ZKM Karlsruhe; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Millenium Museum Beijing; National Museum of China; Nabi Art Center Seoul; De Appel Amsterdam; IMAL Brussel; OCT Shenzhen; YermilovCentre Kharkiv; V2 Lab Rotterdam; De Waag Society Amsterdam; Frascati Theatres Amsterdam; LABoral Gijón; RIXC Riga; Eyebeam New York; Sonic Acts Amsterdam; IASPIS Stockholm; Transmediale Berlin, Li-Ma Amsterdam; Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam; Urban Screens Melbourne; HeK Basel; ISEA 2004, 2011, 2016, 2019; Beall Center for Art+Technology; Cinekid Amsterdam; Kiasma Museum Helsinki.
● RESIDENCIES, FELLOWSHIPS, COLLABORATIONS (click here) include: EMAP European Media Art Platform - European Cultural Program 2018-2021; TASML Tsinghua University Beijing Art, Science and Media Lab 2014; TU Delft & EIT-ICT European Programme 2011; Iaspis Stockholm 2010; Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien 'Digital Synaesthesia Group' 2016; Banff Media Center Canada 'Liminal Screens' 2011; University of Nottingham (UK) Mixed Reality Lab & Prof. Benford's UKRI - Turing fellowship 'Somabotics: Creative and embodied A.I.' 2024-2027.
● COMMISSIONS (click here) include: UP Projects London; Provincie Utrecht Rotondelab, Kunstgebouw Zuid-Holland; Impakt Utrecht ’Cyborg Futures’; Rijksmuseum MediaLab Amsterdam.

● PUBLICATIONS/PRESS about Lancel/Maat's work (click here).
● PAPERS/ESSAYS by Lancel/Maat (click here).
● (KEYNOTE) LECTURES (click here) include: TEDX Istanbul; World Expo 2010 Shanghai / Mobile Platforms; CHI Montreal; ISEA 2019 Gwangju; Ars Electronica 2011; EAI ArtsIT Aalborg; VR Days Rotterdam; TransMediale Berlin; University for Applied Science Amsterdam .
● EDUCATIONAL appointments (click here) include: BA and MA Media Art Minerva Academy, Hanze University Groningen (1998- 2023) while heading the MA Media Art department MADTeCH (2005-2009); BA/MA Art academy HKU Utrecht; Tsinghua design University Beijing; Kookmin University Seoul; MA art-science Royal Academy The Hague; MA Artez Enschede and Arnhem; Rietveld Art academy Amsterdam; MA Film Academy Amsterdam.

● COLLECTIONS include: ZKM Karlsruhe; Digital-Canon LIMA; KPN Telecommunication Netherlands; private collections.
● GRANTS and support (click here) include: Mondriaan Fund; Fund for Creative Industries; NWO Dutch Scientific Research Organisation, European Cultural Program; Embassies/Cultural Consulate of a.o.: Shanghai, Kharkiv, New York, Moscow, Canada.
● SPONSORS include: Eagle Science Software Amsterdam, Phillips Lab and Fourtress Eindhoven, Driebit Amsterdam.

● REPRESENTED BY Public Art Lab Berlin (click here).