Touch Me (Not)
Video Installation
2020
12.35 x 8.62 x 0.71 in
Macbook Pro 13', projector,
video (02:53, loop)
While the eyes are fixed onto the screen where letters pop up, the expression is exported via the taps of fingertips. An ambiguous intimacy lingers between the tangibility on the substantial keyboard and the non-physical communication of two minds. Despite the former indicating a relatively isolated state while the latter suggests the fact of a company, a sense of intimacy is felt in the solitude.
Touch Me (Not) extracts the sense of touch as a form of expression in digital communication to examine the machine as a physical agency of intimacy that silently partakes the way we connect.
…
Are we strangers?
Are you there?
Can you see me?
Are we strangers?
…
- Inspiration & Development & Process -
Expression comes into shape through tangibility;
meanwhile, expression is received through vision
→
a dialogue;
a monologue;
a mirror;
the unseen words;
…
In my early experiment, I juxtaposed the first-person-perspective video of hands typing on keyboard, but the tactility didn’t fully reveal.
→
Prototype of the installation juxtaposing a first person perspective of hands typing on keyboard with a non-reciprocated sense of touch.
Later I discovered the “keyboard skin”, which resembles human skin in tactility and in concept (protection), rendering a sense of intimacy. The transparent skin also allowed me to capture the touched surface of fingertips.
scanning the pressed keys →
Inspired by the form of braille as a language of tangibility, I scanned the pressed key of each letter and made them into an alphabet. These letters were later edited into two parts of stop-motion animation of a dialogue, which consists of a series of questions trying to confirm the communication. Both parts of pressed keys refer to the same words but in different paces. Separately, each looks like a monologue. However, when playing together on synchronization (one plays on screen, the other is mapped and projected onto the physical keyboard), the two fit into each other's pace and compose a dialogue.
↑ Alphabet from Touch Me (Not)
↑ Editing single letters into stop-motion animation with reference to typing pace
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