E.E.G. KISS

"Another kind of Rodin". Joyce Roodnat in NRC Handelsblad newspaper:

AWARDS
TASIE 2019 Award, National Museum of China
/ Art & Science Innovation Prize Wu Guanzhong by Tsinghua University Beijing.
NFF Netherlands Film Festival Nomination Golden Calf Interactive 2019.
GAAC Global Art & A.I. Competition 2019 Award China
EMARE /EMAP Europe Media Art Platform Grant
Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Can I kiss you online? How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data?
Can we transfer a kiss and it’s intimacy online? Can we measure a kiss and what kissers feel together? Do we want to save our private kisses in a transparent database - to be used by others?
E.E.G. KISS investigates what it means for a kiss to be translated into bio-feedback data. The artists studied and deconstructed rituals of a kissing to design a new digital synesthetic kissing ritual. E.E.G. KISS invites participants to feel, see, hear and touch, to share a Global Kiss. The artists: "Technologies extend our bodies beyond biological boundaries in time and space, but they prevent us from touching. In this poetic, electric environment for kissing and measuring, for synchronizing and merging, we explore a shared neurofeedback system for a global 'E.E.G. KISS Symphony'."

Performance installation
The participatory performance disrupts familiar relations between ‘who you kiss and who is being kissed, what you see and what you hear’ and creates a new aesthetic synthesis. Participants are invited to kiss, while wearing E.E.G. headsets recording their brains' activity. While kissing, a visualisation of entangled data ('Dancing Data') of their brain activities is realtime streaming around them in a floor projection. Simultaneously, the visual data are transferred into a soundscore based on an algorithm creating a realtime 'soundscape of kissing brains'. In this immersive kissing data scape participants and also spectators are part of the kiss, of the sound and of the immersive E.E.G.-data-visualization, both as an aesthetic experience as well as based on acts of kissing resonating when mirrored in their brains. Worldwide, diverse audiences are involved in this ongoing artistic research, through carefully hosted performances, installations, lectures, collaborations, workshops.

Share your private kiss. Each unique visual E.E.G. KISS data sequence is saved in a database, and can be printed as an E.E.G. KISS Portrait. Each E.E.G. KISS soundscape is saved in a online public database and can be downloaded and shared Download: E.E.G.KISS Sounds.

Can we trust our E.E.G. KISS data? The artists: "Performativity of kissing is based tacit knowledge, bio-synchronisation, sensory and aesthetic perception, proximity in time and space, touch, sight, fluids, smell, endurance. Future Brain to Brain kissing will quantify, co-shape and limit these sensations. This raises the questions: What universal AI model will shape our future kisses? Who is responsible and who will benefit? E.E.G. KISS is inspired by Berlant (1998) who describes our sense of intimacy to be continuously changing in different cultures ad contexts, through public negotiation. The performance presents a hybrid space for such continous negotiation and dialogue. The emerging EEG data traces are presented as an ongoing process of 'writing' the kiss in public, as kathalysts to provoke dialogue on shared bodily experience, 'objective truth' and authorship.

"In science, digital data represents things outside. In art, digital data points at itself, for reflection". Free to: T. Morton, 2018.

How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data? The artists: "This art work is a ‘Reflexive DataScape’, a dialogue space for reclaiming agency of public data-interpretation and its effect on personal relations. It means to critically deconstruct automated control technologies but also to inspire intimate relations in hybrid worlds. Each performance is fueled with interdependent relations between human an digital data; of tacit sensations, imagination and mirror-processes; and an intense sense of vulnerable social and embodied connections with spectators around - who in turn expect to maybe kissing next. Worldwide, people have expressed manifold personal interpretations of the E.E.G. data, based on personal, empathetic, touching, comfortable and discomfortable sensations and memories. They often see the data as a form of co-creation: a "Portrait of our Kiss". Click here for experiences in Lancel's thesis 'Can I Touch You Online?'.

Hosting Public Space. Participants are carefully, tenderly hosted to take all the time they need to kiss, to find new words, and give meaning to
 their very abstract, sometimes mystifying visual and sonic data based on memory. E.E.G. KISS curates an ethical public space with shared response-ability for the power of synchronizing through touching, watching, breathing, kissing - while hovering between (virtual) embodiment and (tele-)presence."

SHOWS

Exhibitions /Performances / Conference Lectures 2014-2025
The performances take place in time slots; exhibitions combine the installation with a generative database and performance documentation.

2021 LABoral, Gijon Spain. With EMAP European Media Art Platform and the European ARTificial Intelligence LAB. Curator: Karin Ohlenschläger. Virtual Exhibition and Lecture. Kissing Data.
2021-2022. IMAL Brussel. 'Swipe Right! Data, Dating, Desire'. Curators: Ania Malonowska, Valentina Peri. with !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Crosslucid, Dries Depoorter, Joana Moll, Ingo Niermann & The Army Of Love, Eva Ostrowska, Dani Ploeger, Addie Wagenknecht & Pablo Garcia. E.E.G. KISS.
2018 Haus der Elektronische Kunst HeK Basel Future Love. Desire and Kinship in Hypernature. Curator: Boris Magrini. Premiere: E.E.G. Kiss, collaborative hosting ritual ](http://www.hek.ch/en/program/events-en/event/future-love-1.html)
2017 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Statements / Worlding the Brain
Exhibition and Conference. Curator: Patricia Pisters
2017 RIXC center for new media culture, Riga Art Science festival Open Fields.
Exhibition and Conference curators: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits.
Speakers/artists a.o. Chris Salter, Monica Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss, Ellen Pearlman
2017 Science and Art Gallery Dublin / Waag Society, ‘Hack the Brain’.
Curators: Lucas Evers, Mairéad Hurley. Artists a.o. Marco Donnarumma.
2016 BeallCenter for Art + Technology at California University, Irvine L.A. USA
Embodied Encounters. Curators: David Familian, Simon Penny
With artists: Rhona Byrne, George Khut, Alex May, Miriam Simun, Sha Xin Wei.
Conference A Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts
2016 Engaged Art Fair. Curated by: Staff_Room Gallery, Amsterdam. Art of Impakt project | MondriaanFoundation. Location: De Balie Amsterdam.
With a.o. Renzo Martens; Jonas Staal; Debra Solomon & Jaromil Rojo; Bik & VanderPol.
Premiere: Performance for E.E.G. KISS portraits, digi-prints in collaboration with Paulina Matusiak
2016 RIXC center for new media culture, Riga Open Fields 2016
Exhibtion and Conference curators: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits. Artists a.o. Rafal Lozano Hemmer,
James Auger, Telco Systems, PolakvanBekkum. Speakers a.o.: Christiane Paul, Armin Medosch
2016 Hongkong, ISEA 2016

 Digital Synesthesia
University of Applied Arts Vienna, City University Hongkong, ZKM Karlsruhe. Curators: Katharina Gsöllpointner, Ruth Schnell, Romana Schuler, Jeffrey Shaw,Peter Weibel
2016 Angewandte Innovation Lab (AIL) gallery Digital Synesthesia University of Applied Arts Vienna, City University Hongkong, ZKM Karlsruhe. Curators: Katharina Gsöllpointner, Ruth Schnell, Romana Schuler, Jeffrey Shaw,Peter Weibel. Premiere: 'Synesthetic E.E.G. Kiss'
2016 Frascati Theatres Amsterdam The end of Privacy Festival. Curators: Marc Timmer, Kiki Rosingh Performance installation 'Synesthetic E.E.G. KISS Cloud'
2016 UvA University of Amsterdam, Conference. WORLDING THE BRAIN: Patterns, Rhythms, Narratives in Neuroscience and the Humanities by Stephan Besser, Machiel Keestra, Julian Kiverstein, Flora Lysen, Patricia Pisters,Tycho Hoogland.With a.o. Prof. Andreas Roepstorff, Alberto Novello, Suzanne Dikker & Matthias Oostrik
2015 Art Gallery City University Hong Kong CONTEMPORARY CODE – ARTISTIC RESEARCH exhibition
In collaboration with Digital Synesthesia Group University of Applied Arts Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe. Curators: Gerald Bast, Alexander Damianisch and Romana Schuler. E.E.G. Kiss
2016 Waag Society for Old and New Media Amsterdam 2016
Hack the Brain
2015 Gogbot Media art festival Enschede Exhibition Internet of things. Curator Kees de Groot.
Performance-installation 'Synesthetic E.E.G. Kiss'

2015 Todays Art 2015 The Hague / Baltan Laboratories Eindhoven
Expert meeting 'Bright Collisions': Hack the Body. Lecture 'Synesthetic E.E.G. Kiss' at Symposium Sensory Experience
and Enhanced Realities
2015 Brakke Grond / Yami-ICHI Amsterdam with a.o. Martine Neddam/Mouchette, PolakvanBekkum, Luis Rodil Fernandez, JODI, performance-installation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2015 University Twente - Tangible User Interaction at the Computer Science. 'Social and Affective Touch Symposium' by Prof Jan van Erp / Gijs Huismans; presentation 'Shared Senses', 'Saving Face', 'E.E.G. Kiss'.
2015 European Science Night | Discovery Festival
Location: NEMO Amsterdam. Curators: Tanja Koning and Arjen Bangma.
2015 VPRO Medialab Eindhoven Opening of the new Media-Lab:
Lecture and performance-installation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2013-2014 TASML Tsinghua Art and Science Media Laboratory, Beijing 2014
Artists-in-residency, Tsinghua University Beijing. Curator: Zhang Ga.
2014 EYE Film Institute Amsterdam & Beyond Biennale 'Body Hacking' Curators: Tanja Koning, Arjen Bangma. Premiere: 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2014 Beyond Bienniale Exhibition: Discovery Festival & Transnatural Tolhuistuin Amsterdam.
Exhibition Reality Shift. Curators: Tanja Koning and Arjen Bangma. Installation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2014 Todays Art, The Hague / Baltan Laboratories Eindhoven
Sensory Experiences Summit. Curator Olof van Winden. Presentation 'E.E.G. Kiss'
2014 Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, Big, Open & Beautiful 'Hack the Body' Baltan Laboratory Eindhoven, Waag Society Amsterdam. With Chris Salter, Marco Donnarumma, prof. Jan van Erp (TNO / University Twente), Ira van Keulen (Rathenau Institute)
2014 European Science Night | Beyond Bienniale | Discovery Festival
Curators: Tanja Koning and Arjen Bangma. 'E.E.G. KISS - Audience participatory lab'

Selection Press
- 'Kissing and Staring in Times of Neuro-mania.' 2019. Flora Lysen. In: Borgdorff H, Peters P, Pinch T (Eds.) Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies. Routledge..
- 'Digital Synesthesia, A Model for the Aesthetics of Digital Art'. 2016. Eds. Katharina Gsöllpointner, Romana Schuler. De Gruyter Publishers. With among others: Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel,Tamiko Thiel/Christoph Reiserer, Kondition Pluriel Martin Kush/Marie Claude Poulin, Lancel/Maat..
- 'When I kiss you, I can taste your soul'. 2016. Essay by Geert Lovink, in 'Digital Synaesthesia'
- NEURAL.IT (nbr 48, 2015) by Alessandro Ludovico. 'E.E.G. Kiss - Quantifying the unquantifiable'
- 'The Role of Art in Emotional-Moral Reflection on Risky and Controversial Technologies: the Case of BNCI'. 2018. Sabine Roeser, Veronica Alfano, Caroline Nevejan.. In: 'Ethical Theory and Moral Practice'. Springer Verlag.
- 'Van E.E.G-kus tot online aanraken.' DELTA Magazine University for Technology Delft door Saskia Bongers.
- 'Data Dating. Love, Technology and Desire'. 2021. Eds. Ania Malinowska, Valentina Peri.