TELE_TRUST by Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat: How do we trust each other as networking bodies? Do we need to look each other in the eyes? Or do we need to touch each other?

In TELE_TRUST Lancel and Maat explore how in our changing social eco-system we increasingly demand transparency; while at the same time we increasingly cover our vulnerable bodies with personal communication-technology. For TELE_TRUST Lancel and Maat designed a hybrid play zone for a vulnerable process, of balancing between fear AND desire for the other. In a visual, poetic way they explore the emotional and social tension between visibility and invisibility; privacy and trust.

TELE_TRUST is a meeting place. It takes place in dynamic public spaces. Here Lancel and Maat invite the audience in six interactive, full body data-veils. The data-veils combine visual elements of full body covering wearables in eastern and western traditions. They are inspired by a monks’ habit and a burqa; as well as by a ‘trustworthy’ chalk stripe business suit.

Everyone can wear a data-veil. When wearing a data-veil your body becomes an interface: flexible sensors are woven in the smart textile of each data-veil. The data-veil functions as a membrane. When touching your own body, the six data-veils form a digital network.

Can I touch you now? By touching your body in the data-veil you can meet others in the network. You meet in an intimate virtual experience, to exchange stories on horror and beauty: Am I here with you? Who is watching who? Who is controlling who? And in whose body?

Part of ElectroSmog, TELE_TRUST is a networked performance between the Banff New Media Institute, Canada, Aotearoa Digital Arts Network, Dundee, New Zealand and De Bailie, Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was performed on March 18, 19 and 20, 2010.