Can I touch you online? How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data?
Can we quantify intimacy? How does my body feel with robots?

Artists and researchers Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat (Studio Lancel/Maat for Art, Technology, Science, Society) are considered pioneers in exploring togetherness and trust within our socio-technical world. Their internationally award-winning work spans visionary media art performance and installations, participatory projects, neuroscience and bio-art, video, storytelling and sound works. They create poetic 'Hybrid Meeting Spaces' and "Artistic Social Labs" to explore visonairy, inclusive more-than-human relations and post-Anthropocene ecologies, together with the audience. Their work invites ethical dialogue about how technology shapes our shared embodied experience of intimacy and empathy, privacy and control, identity, isolation and interdependency, vulnerability, risk 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 of touching and feeling touched (download).

Artworks. At the heart of their work are aesthetic, public 'Artistic Social Labs' - playgrounds for tender, yet provocative social experiments - inviting the audience as co-researchers of 'Trust-Rituals' and 'Trust-Ecologies'. Here the audience meets via radical speculative A.I. brain-, facial-, robotic, wearable, haptic and online systems and interfaces exploring shifting boundaries between people, nature and machines. Their multisensory participation - hosted by the artists - is traced and portrayed, translated into hybrid social sculptures and immersive audio-viusal data-compositions - 'Shared Reflexive DataScapes' (click here) - that raise dialogue on how we share memories with AI, and how AI interferes in our sense of trust. Across multiple contexts and cultures worldwide Lancel/Maat's work has led to transformative 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).