Intimate Transactions

Intimate Transactions was a research project developed in three clear, distinct stages and outcomes between 2003 and 2005. The entire project sought to cross-fertlise knowledges of performance and media arts in the pursuit of an expanded and enriched range of interactive experiences for audiences, whilst promoting new opportunities to foster a better understanding of cultural and ecological co dependencies. Intimate Transactions (Stage 3) resulted in a new form of telepresence-based interactive installation that allowed two people in geographically separate spaces to interact simultaneously using only their bodies. Participants used a physical interface called a ‘Bodyshelf’ and wore a sound vibration transmission device around their necks called a ‘haptic pendant’. By gently moving their bodies and engaging through this ‘smart furniture’, they instigated ‘intimate transactions’, which influenced an evolving ‘world’ created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback. This shared experience allowed each participant to gradually develop a form of sensory intimacy with the other, despite the fact that they were geographically separated and could not physically see or hear each other. Participants could subsequently choose to act in different ways as they began to understand how their actions affected everything within the environment AND the other participant - thereby focusing them on better understanding the influences and relationships within the work's interlinking ecologies