by Paul Wiersbinski
London 2018

supported by the Art + Technology residency
of SPACE / Goethe Institute

Participants are invited to join a performative game, in which they try out prototypes of video glasses connected to wireless surveillance cameras. Strangers meet in a semi- public situation and are asked to play, while they are watched by the other participants. They experiment with transmitted body movements, improvised choreographies, are “controlled” and take “control” of others. A hybrid space is created, in which the ideas behind science fiction films are combined with a playful approach.

The aim is to experiment with a scenario in which haptic and virtual reality exist next to each other, allowing controlled as well as unrestricted symbolic overlapping areas of language and image. This possibility mirrors the limitless contemporary play with money, power and resources. Ultimately participants will explore the violence of a society focused on algorithmic speed, which constantly pushes for the destruction of haptic and public space through an accelerated concept of time and efficiency.

The resulting discussion reflects on notions of immaterialness and intimacy, surveillance as a perverted form of care-taking, technology pointing inwards and the crucial role it plays in the here and now and its future role in social interaction. The workshop confronts these stories of self-dissolvement, our submerging, drowning and diving into the illusions we create, as we explore the origins of illusions. The word itself deriving from “in-lusio”, meaning to enter a game.