E.E.G. KISS

"Another kind of Rodin". Joyce Roodnat in NRC Handelsblad newspaper:

AWARDS
TASIE 2019 Award, National Museum of China
/ Art & Science Innovation Prize Wu Guanzhong by Tsinghua University Beijing
NFF Netherlands Film Festival, Golden Calf Nomination Interactive 2019
GAAC Global Art & A.I. Competition 2019 Award China
EMARE /EMAP Award, Europe Media Art Platform - Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Can I kiss you online? How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data?
Can we transfer a kiss and it’s intimacy online? Can we measure a kiss and what kissers feel together? Do we want to save our private kisses in a transparent database - to be used by others?
In E.E.G. KISS the artists investigate how a kiss can be translated into bio-feedback data. They deconstruct the kiss, to reconstruct a new synesthetic kissing ritual. In a Global Kiss-In, through feeling, seeing, hearing, touching all participants together share a kiss.
The artists: "Tele-presence technologies extend our bodies beyond biological boundaries in time and space, but they prevent us from touching. In a poetic, electric environment for kissing and measuring, for synchronizing and merging, we research a shared neuro-feedback system for networked kissing."

Performance installation: Digital Synaesthetic EEG KISS
In performances and live kissing experiments with Brain Computer Interfaces, visitors are invited to kiss. While kissing and wearing E.E.G. headsets, their brainwaves are measured and visible as E.E.G. data. A floor projection encircles the kissers with the real time streaming E.E.G. data, as an immersive data scape. A soundscape is generated by the Brain Computer Interface, which translates the real time E.E.G. data of ‘kissing brains’ into a algorithm for a music score: an E.E.G. KISS symphony. The public around is part of the kiss, of the sound and of the immersive E.E.G.-data-visualization; both as an aesthetic experience as well as based on acts of kissing resonating when mirrored in the brain.

How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data?
In EEG KISS, data are researched as 'Co-Actors' shaping our intimate relations.
The artists: "In a participatory process of sense-making, we invite participants to give meaning to
 the very abstract, sometimes mystifying E.E.G. data-visualization of their kisses. Instead of scientific interpretation and validation, people who kissed interprete the data-visualization based on their shared memories of kissing and on imagination. Often, the kisses are remembered as intimate processes of 'co-creation’ and the data are perceived as 'A portrait of our kiss'.”

Share your private kiss Each unique E.E.G. KISS visual data sequence is saved in a database, and can be printed as an E.E.G. KISS Portrait. Each E.E.G. KISS soundscape is saved in a public database on the website; to be downloaded and shared. The soundscape is developed with Tijs Ham at STEIM Amsterdam.

INTIMACY & BIG DATA: critical reflections
‘In science, digital data represents things. In art, digital data points at itself'. (Free to: T. Morton 2018).
The artists: "A kiss is an obvious case of intimate, emotional interaction, based on bio synchronizing, spatial nearness, touch, sight, fluids, smell, endurance. But in an online kiss, this intimacy is influenced and shaped by technologies, institutions and social processes. Now when our embodied private kiss data are to be quantified, on what data design do we validate this interaction? Who is responsible for and who will benefit from our quantified kisses?
Can we trust our own E.E.G. Kiss data? Or should we rather protect our intimacy? In E.E.G. KISS we do not protect our intimate, private data. Instead, we create with these data a new hybrid, relational ritual allowing for public intimacy. Rather than focussing on the privacy of the kiss intimacy, we focus on how intimacy is embedded in publicness and cultural negotation (Berlant, 1998). The work invites participants for shared reflection and authorship, on experience of embodiment in merging realities. In communal intimate orchestrations, ‘kissers’ and spectators witness and share their perception of embodied, tele-matic kissing. Instead of prosthaetic interfaces for networked touch, we focus on shared mirror processes, communal brain interfaces and shared neuro-feedback systems. In this way, we aim to create a shared sensitive public space, response-ability for the power of synchronizing through touching, watching, breathing, kissing, sharing presence and shared storytelling- in today’s merging realities.

Meaning of data patterns in art: Data validation, Data mystification. This art work is a ‘Reflexive DataScape’, a space for dialogue reclaiming agency for public data-interpretation. Instead of humans being directed by data (that represent and interpret their activities), public participants explore a mode of living with data as 'Co-Actors’. Participants explore manifold personal interpretations and connections with spontaneous EEG data-traces, fueled with personal memory of intimate experience of kissing and caressing. In the performances, the emerging data traces have shown to evoke tender, strange, unfamiliar (non-)human relations and emphatic processes among participants. The data traces and patterns are often interpreted by participants as co-created, 'intimate portraits'. For experiences, see the Artists Texts.

Worldwide, audiences are involved in this ongoing artistic research, through hosted performances, installations, lectures, collaborations, workshops.

Art, Science & Technology

Art, Science & Technology E.E.G. KISS emerges from the artistic research Shared Senses, further conducted at Delft University of Technology in the context of Lancel’s PhD trajectory (Promotor: Prof. dr. Frances Brazier). In Meeting Spaces and Meeting Rituals the artists deconstruct automated control technologies (surveillance, social media, brain computer interfaces, quantifying biometric technologies) to rethink and inspire sensitive relations based on intimacy, tacit knowledge, digital synesthesia, bio-synchronisation, sensory and aesthetic perception.

In EEG KISS, artistic experiments are conducted for designing reflection on BCI mediated social relations. At the same time, these experiments propose a future vision on orchestration of BCI mediated social syntheses. In the orchetrations, Lancel/Maat propose participants to experimentally kiss each other to connect with observers and thus be part of a ‘communal neuro-feedback system for kissing’. The familiar relation between ‘who you kiss and who is being kissed, what you see and what you hear’ is disrupted, for a new reflective synthesis.

‘I am part of the networks and the networks are part of me...
I link, therefore I am.’ William .J. Mitchell

Find here: E.E.G.KISS Sound Downloads

SHOWS

Exhibitions /Performances / Conference Lectures 2014-2017
Performances take place in time slots, in E.E.G. KISS exhibitions
of reflexive data environment (generative database and documentation).

2018 Haus der Elektronische Kunst HeK Basel Future Love. Desire and Kinship in Hypernature.
Curator: Boris Magrini. Premiere: E.E.G. Kiss, collaborative hosting ritual
2017 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Statements / Worlding the Brain
Exhibition and Conference. Curator: Patricia Pisters
2017 RIXC center for new media culture, Riga Art Science festival Open Fields.
Exhibition and Conference curators: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits.
Speakers/artists a.o. Chris Salter, Monica Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss, Ellen Pearlman
2017 Science and Art Gallery Dublin / Waag Society, ‘Hack the Brain’.
Curators: Lucas Evers, Mairéad Hurley. Artists a.o. Marco Donnarumma.
2016 BeallCenter for Art + Technology at California University, Irvine L.A. USA
Embodied Encounters. Curators: David Familian, Simon Penny
With artists: Rhona Byrne, George Khut, Alex May, Miriam Simun, Sha Xin Wei.
Conference A Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts
2016 Engaged Art Fair. Curated by: Staff_Room Gallery, Amsterdam. Art of Impakt project | MondriaanFoundation. Location: De Balie Amsterdam.
With a.o. Renzo Martens; Jonas Staal; Debra Solomon & Jaromil Rojo; Bik & VanderPol.
Premiere: Performance for E.E.G. KISS portraits, digi-prints in collaboration with Paulina Matusiak
2016 RIXC center for new media culture, Riga Open Fields 2016
Exhibtion and Conference curators: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits. Artists a.o. Rafal Lozano Hemmer,
James Auger, Telco Systems, PolakvanBekkum. Speakers a.o.: Christiane Paul, Armin Medosch
2016 Hongkong, ISEA 2016

 Digital Synesthesia
University of Applied Arts Vienna, City University Hongkong, ZKM Karlsruhe. Curators: Katharina Gsöllpointner, Ruth Schnell, Romana Schuler, Jeffrey Shaw,Peter Weibel
2016 Angewandte Innovation Lab (AIL) gallery Digital Synesthesia University of Applied Arts Vienna, City University Hongkong, ZKM Karlsruhe. Curators: Katharina Gsöllpointner, Ruth Schnell, Romana Schuler, Jeffrey Shaw,Peter Weibel. Premiere: 'Synesthetic E.E.G. Kiss'
2016 Frascati Theatres Amsterdam The end of Privacy Festival. Curators: Marc Timmer, Kiki Rosingh Performance installation 'Synesthetic E.E.G. KISS Cloud'
2016 UvA University of Amsterdam, Conference. WORLDING THE BRAIN: Patterns, Rhythms, Narratives in Neuroscience and the Humanities by Stephan Besser, Machiel Keestra, Julian Kiverstein, Flora Lysen, Patricia Pisters,Tycho Hoogland.With a.o. Prof. Andreas Roepstorff, Alberto Novello, Suzanne Dikker & Matthias Oostrik
2015 Art Gallery City University Hong Kong CONTEMPORARY CODE – ARTISTIC RESEARCH exhibition
In collaboration with Digital Synesthesia Group University of Applied Arts Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe. Curators: Gerald Bast, Alexander Damianisch and Romana Schuler. E.E.G. Kiss
2016 Waag Society for Old and New Media Amsterdam 2016
Hack the Brain
2015 Gogbot Media art festival Enschede Exhibition Internet of things. Curator Kees de Groot.
Performance-installation 'Synesthetic E.E.G. Kiss'

2015 Todays Art 2015 The Hague / Baltan Laboratories Eindhoven
Expert meeting 'Bright Collisions': Hack the Body. Lecture 'Synesthetic E.E.G. Kiss' at Symposium Sensory Experience
and Enhanced Realities
2015 Brakke Grond / Yami-ICHI Amsterdam with a.o. Martine Neddam/Mouchette, PolakvanBekkum, Luis Rodil Fernandez, JODI, performance-installation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2015 University Twente - Tangible User Interaction at the Computer Science. 'Social and Affective Touch Symposium' by Prof Jan van Erp / Gijs Huismans; presentation 'Shared Senses', 'Saving Face', 'E.E.G. Kiss'.
2015 European Science Night | Discovery Festival
Location: NEMO Amsterdam. Curators: Tanja Koning and Arjen Bangma.
2015 VPRO Medialab Eindhoven Opening of the new Media-Lab:
Lecture and performance-installation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2013-2014 TASML Tsinghua Art and Science Media Laboratory, Beijing 2014
Artists-in-residency, Tsinghua University Beijing. Curator: Zhang Ga.
2014 EYE Film Institute Amsterdam & Beyond Biennale 'Body Hacking' Curators: Tanja Koning, Arjen Bangma. Premiere: 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2014 Beyond Bienniale Exhibition: Discovery Festival & Transnatural Tolhuistuin Amsterdam.
Exhibition Reality Shift. Curators: Tanja Koning and Arjen Bangma. Installation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2014 Todays Art, The Hague / Baltan Laboratories Eindhoven
Sensory Experiences Summit. Curator Olof van Winden. Presentation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2014 Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, Big, Open & Beautiful 'Hack the Body' Baltan Laboratory Eindhoven, Waag Society Amsterdam. With Chris Salter, Marco Donnarumma, prof. Jan van Erp (TNO / University Twente), Ira van Keulen (Rathenau Institute)
2014 European Science Night | Beyond Bienniale | Discovery Festival
Curators: Tanja Koning and Arjen Bangma. 'E.E.G. KISS - Audience participatory lab'

Selection Press
- Catalogue 'Digital Synesthesia', essay by Geert Lovink
'When I kiss you, I can taste your soul', 2016

• Digital Art Journal: NEURAL.IT (nbr 48, 2015) by Alessandro Ludovico
  'E.E.G. Kiss - Quantifying the unquantifiable'
• Digital Art Journal: BALTAN Quarterly, essay by Flora Lysen
  'The Neurofutures of Love; Reflections on E.E.G. KISS, an art-science experiment at Baltan Laboratories', page 4-5, January 2016
• Digital Art Journal. Karen Lancel, Hermen Maat, Frances Brazier. 2018. Kissing Data. In: 'Acoustic Space volume No 17'. Published by RIXC, Riga.
• Sabine Roeser, Veronica Alfano, Caroline Nevejan. 2018. The Role of Art in Emotional-Moral Reflection on Risky and Controversial Technologies: the Case of BNCI. In: 'Ethical Theory and Moral Practice'. Springer Verlag.
• DELTA Magazine University for Technology Delft door Saskia Bongers
  'Van E.E.G-kus tot online aanraken'
• Exhibition Catalogue. Robot Love. 2018. Curator Ine Gevers. With among others Driessens & Verstappen, Hito Steierl.
• Scientific Publication. Anna Malinowska. 2018. The matter of kissing. Essays on affection and cultural practice. In: 'The Materiality of Love: Essays on Affection and Cultural Practice'. Routledge / Taylor & Francis.
• Exhibition Catalogue. Katharina Gsöllpointner, Romana Schuler. 2016. Digital Synesthesia, A Model for the Aesthetics of Digital Art. De Gruyter Publishers. With among others: Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel,Tamiko Thiel/Christoph Reiserer, Kondition Pluriel Martin Kush/Marie Claude Poulin, Lancel/Maat.