June 06, 2005
Intimate Transactions
Sensory Intimacy Across Time and Space
Intimate Transactions--by The Transmute Collective--is a new type of interactive installation that allows two people located in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using only their bodies. Each participant uses a physical interface called a ‘Bodyshelf’. By gently moving their bodies on this ‘smart furniture’ they instigate ‘Intimate Transactions’, which influence an evolving ‘world’ created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback. This shared experience allows each participant to gradually develop a form of sensory intimacy with the other, despite the fact that they are geographically separated and cannot physically see or hear each other. As this highly immersive experience evolves, each participant begins to sense their part in a complex web of relations that connect them, and everything else within the work. In this way a subtle, indirect form of collaboration develops via an increasing sense of intimacy between sites.
Participants may choose to act in different ways as they begin to understand how their actions affect everything within the environment AND the other Participant. Hence the work focuses participants upon understanding influences and relationships within the work's ecologies.
Intimate Transactions was awarded an Honorary Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica Competition. It will next be shown in Sept 2005 at the Ars Electronic Festival, Austria and in October 2005 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
Posted by jo at June 6, 2005 11:03 AM
