Touch My Touch

University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam
TouchMyTouch Installation University Twente
Merged Portrait
Caress your face
Interactive performance installation with the streaming platform (touchscreen) at both ends. Sizes 2 x (1.50 x 0.30 x 1.60). Material steel, plexiglass.
Performance Installation view. Interactive performance installation including streaming platform TouchMyTouch.net, on touchscreen at both ends. Sizes 2 x (1.50 x 0.30 x 1.60). Material steel, plexiglass.
Explanation Interaction
show overview
Research
29-06-2021
Amsterdam / London
TouchMyTouch (2021) is commissioned and curated by: UP Projects (TIPS: This is Public Space), with generous support from Arts Council England. ------- With thanks to and supported by: Mondriaan Fund; Delft University of Technology (Participatory Systems Lab); University of Twente (Dutch Society of Social and Affective Touch); HvA Amsterdam (Civic Interaction Design) and (Learning Community Urban Interaction Design - Marjolijn Ruyg); Galerie de Meerse Hoofddorp; Public Art Lab Berlin. With special thanks to the 2019 TASIE Tsinghua University Beijing. Sponsored by ISPA Plastics Amsterdam; and TMT software developer Eagle Science Software Amsterdam.

Can I touch you online?
Can you caress me online?
Can we share our bodies online?
Can I trust your online touch?

While online streaming social platforms extend our bodies audio-visually in time and space, we cannot touch, caress and embrace each other. The COVID19 period has shown that this can result in skin hunger, a decreasing sense of intimacy, and bodily and psychologically isolation. TouchMyTouch questions: Can we imagine caressing each other's bodies online? Can our online caressing bodies be a source to future planetary well-being?

TouchMyTouch is an Online Streaming Platform for Caressing each other.
The Touch My Touch platform transforms AI and control technologies to facilitate intimate connections, using face-recognition software; and merging and deep-fake algorithms.

'Co-Caressing’ Ritual. Based on techno-neuroscientific research into the flexible brain and self-other body boundaries, TouchMyTouch explores a future online ritual for a shared embodied experience of caressing. Lovers, friends, family and strangers share an intimate, playful online 'Co-Caressing’ Ritual while caressing their faces and screens. Their self-images merge into 'Shared Selfies', in a poetic HyperTouching symbiosis.

“My body felt fluid, it was strange, very intimate …I felt as if I caressed my face with my online partner’s hands.”
(TouchMyTouch participant).

The Streaming Social Platform is presented in a Performance and installation.
The three meter long installation includes integrated touch pads at both ends, via which the participants can meet. Participants are guided by a host or trained volunteers, in time slots.
Since 2023 the installation is fully covered in red, soft, tactile felt. The bright red felt carries a monumental white question: "CAN I TOUCH YOU ONLINE?". This engaging question has evoked public attention even from a far distance. It seduces potential participants, to share a paradoxical experience of intimately caressing, while being publicly exposed. In this way, TouchMyTouch playfully provokes a dialogue about relations between tele-presence and absence, shared embodied experience and empathy, in XR, hybrid and mixed realities.

The innovative ongoing Art-Science Research (2021-2024) is created with and interdisciplinary, international team of experts in the arts, neuroscience, socio-biometric design, and participants. Its development emerges from test setups, prototypes, presentations, workshops and dialogues.

The ethical interaction design includes GDPR protocols. The inclusive platform has been created for diverse ages, genders, skin colors, and cultural backgrounds. Sensor data of caressing movements are collected and merged into temporary 'Shared Selfies'; that are no longer identifyable to individuals.