Artist Statement

Keywords: Interactive art, immersion, embodiment, playfulness, sensorial, ‘black box’

This paper will focus on the processes, methods and results applied to the development of the interactive installation Under the skin another skin (2016). The installation is presented in the shape of three humanscale three-dimensional objects and it is made from flexible materials, such as textiles, inviting the (interacting) audience, to physically engage in a bodily sensorial, and sensuous, relationship with the artwork. The objects enclose interactive devices and tactile sensors that, when used, trigger in the interactor multiple sensorial stimuli. The interactive installation focuses on the interactor’s intimate haptic experience taking in consideration his or hers sensorial and cognitive mechanisms as a potential apparatus for future interactive aesthetic experiences.

• Patrícia J. Reis (b. 1981, Lisbon, Pt) is an installation artist based in Vienna (At) whose practice encompasses different formats and media to examine our relationship with modern technology. Through an ongoing investigation that destabilize the boundaries between science, technology, magic and spiritual believes, she explores questions “How do we believe in machines?” and “How technology is shaping us bodily?”. Currently she holds a position as a Senior Artist and Lecturer at the Digital Art Department of the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, Austria, and she also lectures at the Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria. Since 2012 she is a board member of the collective Mz* Baltazar’s Lab, a feminist hackerspace based in Vienna. mzbaltazarslaboratory.org

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