#digital mindfulness
Distant Feeling(s) is a project which aims at, once a year, bringing together different interested people, joining from their different locations in the world and share ‘15 minutes’ of togetherness across the network. Resorting to the internet as a common communication channel/medium and to video-conferencing software, everyone is invited to join and remain silent and with eyes closed during the duration of the experiment.
The usual human tools used for communication - sound and vision, commonly applied in video-conferencing - are taken out from the equation while going against everyday (technological) restlessness and enabling other senses to carefully tune into the presence of others. Distant Feeling(s) becomes an intimate portrait of people actively producing a meditative state where the screen becomes a shared and common space for all. A globally dispersed community materializing a relational system, a networked topology that not only represents the network itself, but that discusses the fragile situation of us being together while apart.
Watch video [here]
Distant Feeling(s) is a project by Annie Abrahams ( @e-stranger), Lisa Parra ( @parralis) and Daniel Pinheiro. An online [open to all] yearly reconnection, a ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated. An ever-changing re-enactment of our intra-action with and through machines.
more info:
bram.org/distantF/
landproject.tumblr.com/distantfeelings
LAND PROJECT: Placelessness (October, 2015) collaboration with Annie Abrahams: aabrahams.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/placelessness//youtu.be/tc3nxu-4nno)
// Previous sessions //
Video - Distant Feeling(s) #1 (raw version) [online, private session]: https://vimeo.com/158351502
Video - Distant Feeling(s) #2 [reSense [movement, performance, technology, art] Festival, Berlin, online, July 26th - 9h45pm - 10h45pm (GMT+2)]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hu8HDnXh960
Video - Distant Feeling(s) #3 [VisionS in the Nunnery, London, online, November 24th 2016 - 6h30pm (GMT)]: https://vimeo.com/193158145
Video - Distant Feeling(s) #4 [first of a yearly reconnection, online, December 1st 2017]: https://vimeo.com/245530528
Video - Distant Feeling(s) #5 [second of a yearly reconnection, online, December 19th 2018]: https://vimeo.com/308709859
Post link
Performing Absence… to master the medium?!
Merci pour cela Annie, pour ce miroir que tu nous tends vers nous-même, en plus de nous ouvrir des fenêtres et des portes vers les autres. - Agathe Herry (online participant of Distant Feeling(s) #6) - more reactions here
In Distant Feeling(s) #6 once again a space was activated - a space which opens from different locations into an online communicative interface where the participants rest for 15 minutes with eyes closed aware of their individual presence aligned (in time) with others.
This iteration of Distant Feeling(s) is mounted with the recording of a remix of comments - a text containing the key elements which previous participants made note of after entering this space.
As a moment of suspension the project takes the form of a possible meditative process on our situation while being constantly overflowed with electronic acceleration; in this specific case it was performed to a live audience in Malta as part of Video Vortex #12 on September 26 (2019), the event itself being one concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video.
A telematic embrace where nothing seems to happen and where the lack of action is precisely its potential as an agency tool towards fighting alienation and perform a possible form of absentia within the network, while the network is in function. So highlighting presence and togetherness as main aspects of social interaction only possible when refraining the imposed ubiquitous spatio-temporal unity that is imposed by technology.
Distant Feeling(s) is a project by Annie Abrahams ( @e-stranger), Lisa Parra ( @lisaparra) and Daniel Pinheiro ( @daniel-pinheiro)
OnWednesday, December 19th 2018[between2 and 2.15PM UTC],Distant Feeling(s) was activated - again, for the second time - as a participatory online happening, bringing together the artists and participants, all connecting from different remote locations through the use of the videoconferencing platform zoom.us.
Initially started as part of Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro’s collaboration in LAND PROJECT, the project grew into an a specific model of interaction between the three artists involved and has been presented in different formats and contexts. Even if it can be activated outside of its yearly iteration - Distant Feeling(s) is a project which aims at, (least) once a year, bringing together different interested people, joining from their different locations in the world and share ‘15 minutes’ of togetherness across the network. Resorting to the internet as a common communication channel/medium and to video-conferencing software, everyone is invited to join and remain silent and with eyes closed during the duration of the experiment.
For this specific iteration, three different perspectives on the project emerged due to different modes of archiving/documenting the experience:
The last five minutes (editing by Annie Abrahams)
Distant Feeling(s) Gallery View
Distant Feeling(s) (recording by Alix Desaubliaux)
When the usual human tools used for communication - sound and vision, commonly applied in video-conferencing - are taken out from the equation while going against everyday (technological) restlessness and enabling other senses to carefully tune into the presence of others, Distant Feeling(s) becomes an intimate portrait of people actively producing a meditative state where the screen becomes a shared and common space for all. A globally dispersed community materializing a relational system, a networked topology that not only represents the network itself, but that discusses the fragile situation of us being together while apart.
Distant Feeling(s) #5: the fifth session of Distant Feeling(s) - the second of an online ritual of contemplation, a yearly reconnection reflecting on our situation of being together while separated.
Distant Feeling(s) is a project by Annie Abrahams ( @e-stranger), Lisa Parra ( @parralis) and Daniel Pinheiro ( @daniel-pinheiro ) - a series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence with EYES CLOSED and NO TALKING.
info also at bram.org/distantF/
dedicated page at http://landproject.tumblr.com/distantfeelings
Distant Feeling(s) #4 - Friday December 1st 2017, 7.30 - 7.45PM (GMT+1). Online. Eyes Closed. No talking. Open to all.
15 minutes of ‘us’ being together, (t)here, where? The time between the encounters will happen from now until then what/how will it be? same people? same set up? same software?! The time in between will measure these questions and urgencies that we bring to this moment. Maybe in the future 15 minutes won’t be enough. Maybe too much?
15 minutes against the everyday digital restlessness, building a sensorial invisible fabric that gathers who’s participating (and who’s not?!), resiliently coming back to this shared moment, with the same faces or others, other possibilities of promoting a silent and blind encounter across each other in an electronic communion. Will it be ‘us’ again?!
[online recording of zoom meeting here]
[screen recording of Daniel’s desktop here]
Distant Feeling(s) #4 is the fourth session in a series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence eyes closed and no talking.
An online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated.
by Lisa Parra @parralis , Annie Abrahams @e-stranger , Daniel Pinheiro @daniel-pinheiro
info also at bram.org/distantF/
dedicated page at landproject.tumblr.com/distantfeelings
Distant FeelingS #3 - VisionS in the Nunnery - Oct5-Dec18 2016 (Thursday, November 24th - 6h30pm (GMT) (view the full programme here)
For this 3rd online encounter between the three artists, Distant Feeling(s) - curated by Tessa Garland and Cinzia Cremona for the programme at the Nunnery Gallery (London, UK) - the main question remains:
How does it feel to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking?
A moment of digital mindfulness, a moment to experience the relational tissue that networked environments (expanded to several layers of our common daily routines) provide. By using an interface that relies on senses activated by audio and video in order to establish communication we take a moment to explore the possibilities beyond using those same senses, this time by opening the possibility for others to join.
Annie Abrahams (FR), Lisa Parra (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT) + possible participants at the gallery + online participants
The piece presented by Annie Abrahams (Distant Feeling(s) #1) continues the research of an artist who challenges the relational utopias attributed to the internet by creating performances which reveal empty yet precious moments, and the banality of interpersonal relations. The performance links Abrahams to two other artists (Daniel Pinheiro & Lisa Parra); from three different locations the three seek to communicate sensations and emotions. Cinzia Cremona (one of the curators) in ARSHAKE Oct. 3 2016.
The link to join the zoom.us meeting dedicated to this event will be shared soon.
(Download the application - desktop or other devices - and “Join meeting” ID = 630407193: https://zoom.us/j/630407193 at the right time.)
