Can I Touch You Online?
THESIS
Can I Touch You Online?
Embodied, Empathic Intimate Experience of Shared Social Touch in Hybrid Connections.
Karen Lancel's thesis is based on artistic and scientific research into experience of technically mediated touching and feeling touched.
At the heart of this thesis is the among the world's first interaction model for social touch ‘Can I Touch You Online?’ (CITYO).
It has inspired new perspectives on the Art and Design of Ethics and Emotional Well-Being, including social (dis)connection and isolation (f.e. through (collective) trauma); co-creation; neurodiversity; and shared presence.
This thesis was guided by promotor Prof. Dr. Frances M. Brazier, at the Technical University of Delft, TPM, at the Participatory Systems Lab. It has been substantiated by multiple blind peer review paper publications (find here). The 259 pages include both artworks and artistic/scientific research by Lancel and Maat, accompanied by more than 60 full colour images of their work.
Shops Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, Underbelly shop, and Erasmus Library Supplier Amsterdam. The thesis has been included in art library collections of among others University of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Leiden.
SUMMARY
Experience of touching and feeling touched is fundamental to human well-being, of safety and trust. Being in touch with others can be emotional and spiritual, it enables space for movement and transformation: to touch, kiss, play, dance, make love, tune and breath together.
Until recently, research into Human Computer Interaction has concentrated on the performative potential of technology, on physiological and technological aspects of social touch; and less on human experience as a starting point.
However, recent research shows that ethical aspects of vulnerability, inclusiveness, agency, autonomy, trust are core to human experience of technically mediated social touch. New neuroscience research focuses on mirror neuron and cognitive activity in empathic processes through touch; and on perception of one's own body in visuo-haptic motor data interaction.
Media Performance Art has a rich tradition exploring digital systems for shared experience of sensory, intercorporeal connections and emphatic spectatorship with human and non-human others, in various hybrid social and spatial configurations.
This thesis expands these new research foci from an interdisciplinary Art, HCI, Design and Computer and Neuro-Science perspectives, for discussions on ethics, empathy, body ownership, responsibility and responsiveness, in (neural) multi-actor networks. It explores forms of embodied awareness of touch in technically mediated interaction and the emergence of a new sense of bodily togetherness, with multiple bodies worldwide, between lovers, friends, family, and strangers. And it shows the importance for new performance scripts for ‘shared embodied intimate experience of technically mediated social touch, for multiple participants’, defined in this thesis as Shared Social Touch.
The Literature brings together fragmented knowledge from Design, Art, HCI, Social and Neuroscience, with a focus on characteristics for empathic interaction through social touch. Theoretical perspectives have been combined with insights from Media Performance Art research into social touch, to explore essential aesthetic principles for intimate interaction between humans, technology and biofeedback data; and for socially and for the design of technically hosting multiple participants in a shared space.The literature shows that co-creation of intimate experience and meaning making are crucial to the orchestration of Shared Social Touch, combining shared experience of a) Sensory Disruption (of reciprocal, physical touching and being touched, in shared empathic vulnerable interplay) combined with b) Shared Reflection on the experience.