[ISEA2019] Paper: Paul Sermon — Touched, a penumbra keyboard projection

Abstract

Keywords: Telematic, installation, telepresence, proprioceptive, chat, interface, keyboard, cognitive, illusion, intimacy

The underlying research for this paper recalls the development and presentation of telepresent installations ‘Telematic Dreaming’ and ‘The Telematic Séance’ from 1993. Twenty-five years on I produced the installation ‘Touched’, exhibited in the Digital Encounters Show for the British Science Festival in 2017. Technically, ‘Touched’ worked in exactly the same way as ‘The Telematic Séance’, its layering of keyboard projection, text and image explores a new telematic experience of intimacy where the meaning of the type becomes dependent on the richness of touch. The paper compares this with Myron Krueger’s founding ‘Metaplay’ experiments in the late 1970s involving touching hands on a telepresent screen and the findings of the proprioceptive ‘Rubber Hand Illusion’ developed by Psychologists Matthew Botvinick and Jonathan Cohen. These comparisons concur with the phenomenological outcomes participants experienced in ‘Touched’ where a greater sense of empathy emerges through a shared space of mutual presence.

  • Paul Sermon was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, in the category of interactive art, for the hyper media installation ‘Think about the People now’ in Linz, Austria, 1991. Produced the ISDN videoconference installation ‘Telematic Vision’ as an Artist in Residence at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1993. Received the Sparky Award from the Interactive Media Festival in Los Angeles for the telepresent installation ‘Telematic Dreaming’, June 1994. From 1993 to 1999 worked as Dozent for Media Art at the HGB Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Germany. From 2000 to 2013 Professor of Creative Technology at the University of Salford, School of Arts & Media. From 1997 to 2001 Guest Professor for Performance and Environment at The University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. Since September 2013 Professor of Visual Communication in the School of Art at the University of Brighton, United Kingdom

Full text (PDF) p. 474-476