Kissing Data Symphony

Can a kiss be translated into bio-feedback data? How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data? Artists’ duo and researchers Lancel/Maat critically investigate social/sensory connections, privacy, empathy, vulnerability and trust when mediated by Multi Brain Computer Interfaces (Multi BCI).

During internationally shown performance-installations, people are invited to experience a shared kiss, as an intimately co-created, reflexive data-scape. Acts of kissing are re-orchestrated for a poetic, digital synesthetic ritual. In live kissing experiments with Multi BCI E.E.G. headsets, visitors are invited as Kissers or Observers. During kissing, their brain waves are measured. Real-time, their streaming E.E.G. data encircle them in a floor projection. Simultaneously, the Observers brain waves are measured, their neurons mirroring activity of intimate kissing movements, resonating in their imagination. Both Kissers’ and Observers’ data intimately co-create an immersive visual, reflexive data scape, translated to an algorithm for a soundscape – a ‘Kissing Data Symphony’.

Kissing Data encourages shared agency to explore, co-create and co-interpret intimate BCI data, to share dialogue and reflection on ethical design concepts. In this poetic, Multi BCI mediated social synthesis, each unique E.E.G. data soundscape is saved to be downloaded and appropriated by all visitors. A selection of data-visualizations is printed as a ‘Portrait of a Shared Kiss’. In 2019, the work was awarded the prize of the Global AI Art Competition (GAAC), Tsinghua University, China.

This work was realised within the framework of the European Media Art Platforms (EMAP) programme at RIXC (LV) with support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union.