Wolfsburg Museum- Phaeno Project
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Wolfsburg Project
Distance Touch Generator
Touch, the most intimate of our five senses is often used as a reality-check; what I can touch is real. It is a proof that our bodies and the world around us remain anchored in the physical reality, that is currently engulfed with the mediated virtual/digital realities. Touch is an ultimately interactive communication method: the one who touches is simultaneously being touched. There is no subject-object relationship, no distance, no control, but a direct dialogue. The Distance Touch Generator aims at reconnecting these the physical with the digital through touch and the usage of tactile media and haptic technologies.
This is an artwork, an instrument and a translation medium in one. It is a flexible structure that can transmit haptic information on a distance: when the structure is touched on one site, the touch will be visible and touchable on another.
The installation has two identical but mirrored parts which placed 100 metres from each other on the concourse of Phaeno, the newly developed Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany. Placing the two structures in distant locations will encourage the visitors to play with each other by manipulating the structures with their hands and bodies, and learning about each-other's shapes through touch. Furthermore, the visitors' touches will remain as shape-traces in the memory of the installation. In the moments of low activity, the installation will bring the traces back to the surface of the structures. The software will use the visitors' traces to create new shapes and body-forms: the traces will be mixed, transformed and grown, as if the visitors' touch has 'fertilized' this anorganic form that became alive and autonomous.
