Making touch visible with the suture of fantasy with virtual aesthetician in “The Best Facial Clinic” – The glitchy-score of tele-synaesthesia performance in the age of global pandemic

Ada Xiaoyu Hao

doi:10.7238/artnodes.v0i28.387149

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been adapting as fugitives of this accidental encounter with an “untouchable” virus, while being rendered into the shared virtual arena, where our discursive bodies are situated within, embedded in and tele-commuted to. Our increasing dependence on online interaction and video conferencing during the pandemic is not only facilitating social connectedness, but also contemplating the question: How to elongate our somatosensation and echo the embodied experience of touching through the incorporeal virtual connectivity? This essay focuses on the embodied nature of tele-synaesthesia performance, its potential effect of forging a rhythmic connection from one sensuous modality to another, and the concurrent emergences of glitch and internet latency as non-verbal cues of internet-situated communication. In reference to Laura Mark’s theory of haptic visuality, where vision triggers a tactile experience in the body; Naomi Bennett’s concept of virtual touch, in which an affective sensory response of touch can be elicited through non-tactile senses, Paul Sermon’s artistic production of Telematic Quarantine (2020) and Pandemic Encounter (2020), that telepresents the stories of self (isolation), and in relation to Michel Foucault’s concept Heterotopia in the context of internet-situated performance, I examine the performance work I have been developing during lockdown since March 2020: The Best Facial (2021), supported by Centre for Digital Media Cultures Research and School of Art Postgraduate Research at University of Brighton, a number of sessions of 25-minute 1-to-1 participatory tele-synaesthesia performances that take place on Zoom, where I become a virtual aesthetician and use telepresence to perform meditative virtual facial tactics, and to make tele-contact improvisation upon the surface of the participant’s face to trigger tactile experiences through haptic visuality, virtual touching, and auditory fantasization.

Highlights

In reference to Laura Mark’s theory of haptic visuality, where vision triggers a tactile experience in the body; Naomi Bennett’s concept of virtual touch, in which an affective sensory response of touch can be elicited through non-tactile senses, Paul Sermon’s artistic production of Telematic Quarantine (2020) and Pandemic Encounter (2020), that tele-presents the stories of self isolation, and in relation to Michel Foucault’s concept Heterotopia in the context of internet-situated performance, I examine a performance work I developed during lockdown since March 2020: The Best Facial 1 (2021): a 25-minute 1-to-1 participatory tele-synaesthesia performance that took place on Zoom, where the participants were invited to receive virtual “facial treatment” performed by a fictional character – a virtual aesthetician
In this essay, paraphrasing the definition of synaesthesia given by Richard Cytowic in his book Synaesthesia: A Union of Senses (1989), and following the hypothesis of tele-synaesthesia proposed by Dr Hugo Heyrman in his lecture, ‘Tele-Synaesthesia: the Telematic Future of the Senses’ (Heyrman 1997), I propose to evaluate the question: how to create a virtual heterotopia to reflect the embodied experience of online communication using the techno-aesthetics of tele-synaesthesia
Tele-synaesthesia performance could be a novel performance art practice that transposes differences between individuals into opencontacts that make the most use of online communication

Summary

A UOC scientific e-journal

Making touch visible with the suture of fantasy with virtual aesthetician in “The Best Facial Clinic” – The glitchy-score of tele-synaesthesia perfor-mance in the age of global pandemic its potential effect of forging a rhythmic connection from one sensuous modality to another, and the concurrent emergences of glitch and internet latency as non-verbal cues of internet-situated communication. En referencia a la teoría de la «visualidad háptica» de Laura Mark, en que la visión desencadena una experiencia táctil en el cuerpo; al concepto «tacto virtual» de Naomi Bennett, con el que se puede provocar una respuesta sensorial afectiva del tacto a través de sentidos no táctiles; a las producciones artísticas Telematic Quarantine (2020) y Pandemic Encounter (2020), de Paul Sermon, que telepresentan las historias del aislamiento; y en relación con el concepto «heterotopia», de Michel Foucalt en el contexto del comportamiento en Internet, exploro el trabajo de interpretación en el que he trabajado durante el confinamiento desde marzo de 2020, The Best Facial (2021), con la ayuda del Centro de Investigación de Culturas de Medios Digitales y de la investigación de posgrado de la Escuela de Arte de la Universidad de Brighton.

Introduction

Findings

Conclusion