#networked experiments

How does it feel to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking?

I felt light, as if I were in a field of light, changing, living light, not with human beings, and probably because that frightened me I tried to visualize you both, to imagine, how, where you were, I tried to make something I could understand of what I felt. As if you were familiar to me - I never met you, but still, apparently you became reassuring, close. (…) Dissolved I felt. Maybe even empty. Certainly destabilized. – Annie Abrahams @e-stranger

This is where I feel that this is not about being mindful, or meditating and rather about sensing and embodying and being present. And in this state of being present we may feel connected to others or we may not– if we are not, then what happens in that isolation? – Lisa Parra @parralis

The “silence” gave space to the sounds of animals, objects and machines. Close to the end I felt that had actually entered the space that us three were sharing together with others. (…) By closing our eyes we’re stripped to just ‘being’, following the rules of not speaking and not looking we are left in a place of communitary lonesomeness that continues to define our everyday world of infinite information and surveillance. – Daniel Pinheiro @daniel-pinheiro

Distant Feeling(s) #3 is part of the encounters between Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro. The 15minutes experiment took place online and was exhibited as part of Visions in the Nunnery. Participants were invited to join either at The Nunnery gallery (London) or remotely using the conference meeting software zoom.us.

As the world grows into a larger networked system, allowing ourselves to share a moment of intimacy with strangers is becoming less probable as we find ourselves immersed in a culture where the sense of time is shifting towards an invisible fastness. It was about acknowledging that system, that fabric, the technological nervous system that became present through the silence of those participating. 

Being in space means to establish diverse relationships with the things that surround our bodies. - Deleuze

As distributed digital entities we become part of an intertwined body that is whole by combining different parts of our extended selves. Telematic culture means, in short, that we do not think, see, or feel in isolation (Roy Ascott) and therefore this electronic communion is built out of the relationships that are established when we are ‘together’ and this ‘togetherness’ comes out of a suspension of disbelief*, that in this digital sphere can be the capacity extending proprioception itself – the way that we recognize and position ourselves within this context.