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” they evoke dialogue about how technology shapes our shared, embodied experience of intimacy and empathy, isolation and vulnerability, privacy and control, identity, interdependency and trust—within entangled, inclusive more-than-human relations and post-anthropocene ecologies. 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 presentions in numerous (key-)lectures. Their educational appointments included BA and MA programs. Dr. Lancel's Art & Science PhD at the TU Delft (2023) "Can I touch you online?" presents a new discourse and the world's first interaction-model for hybrid, shared embodied experience (download).

Artworks. The artists' hybrid meeting-spaces function as aesthetic 'Artistic Social Labs', playgrounds for the audience as 'co-researchers' of tender yet provocative social experiments and 'Trust-Rituals'. The audience meets via speculative A.I. brain-, facial-, haptic and online systems, wearables and robotics, radically reshaped into intimate, multisensory connections that shift embodied boundaries between people and machines. Their participation is translated and portrayed in unique, audiovisual data-compositions: immersive 'Shared Reflexive DataScapes' (click here) raising dialogue on how A.I. and algorithms interfere in mediating our sense of trust. Across cultural contexts, cultures, gender and ages, Lancel/Maat's work has led to transformative personal and collective experience and imagination. The artists host the performances to empower agency for personal and shared meaning-making, and mediated storytelling about memory and 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) including core-lecturer and 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).