Author: Danni

“haptomai” is an ancient Greek word for touch. Its “-omai” ending employs a middle voice, which illuminates the mutuality of touch, that one is simultaneously touching and being touched. Touching-touched, dance emerges in the hyphen, carving out a temporary autonomous zone that are not bounded by fixed identities, in which our emergent relations are possible, in which I am woven into and becoming with others.
This project primarily draws upon my curiosity and practice in Contact Improvisation (CI) – an improvised dance form that invites practitioners to attend to and moving-moved by the emergent shared sensory experience via touch. Yet the research question sprouts from a chance encounter with and continuing practice in CI-inspired online jam since 2021. An inquiry often arising in our online practice has been: (how) can we share sensory experiences, where actual physical touch is absent online? Yet the “CI-ness” truly felt in these online practices enables me to realize that: touch does not end at one’s skin sac; it permeates and transmits through our attention. The embodied attention that touches virtually allows us to tune in to the dance with each other inclusive of various states i/she/he/they/it is in (the zoom-lagging, frozen, disconnection, immobility, not ready, out of tune…).
In inviting touching beings and things alongside you, dancing with more-than-humans, this project also attempts to offer an embodied approach to delve into the post-human
ponderation on intra-active agency and entangled intentionality.
This haptic piece invites you to touch it, with your skin physically, or with your attention virtually, and ask: where is the co-presence of other beings and things that are the co-subject of my dance in this very moment? may I notice in a subtle yet wondrous scale inclusive of beings and things alongside me, participating in their shimmering, wiggling, and murmuring?

 
Knot 结 is an experiment of intergenerational communication through web interactions and bracelet making. For many youths in China, it’s hard to communicate with parents/grandparents deeply. Many feel awkward talking about deep topics with parents/grandparents and the intergenerational conversation often turns out to be a right-or-wrong debate and ends up unhappily. Through interviews with youths in college, the study reveals that youths are unwilling to have deep, intergenerational conversations because 1) they feel that love between close ones is expressed through mundane, short communication; 2) they know the close ones too well that they don’t have anything new to exchange; 3) they prefer synchronous communication like phone calls/face-to-face when it comes to deep conversations, but they don’t have much time/opportunities as many are studying abroad and living a busy life far away from their home. This project, hence, approaches the question: Is it possible for youth to have deep conversations with our parents/grandparents? It attempts to encourage thoughtful and peaceful deep communication through asynchronous interactions and archive the communication in a way that is accessible to both the younger and the elder generations. Specifically, the project consists of 1) a web application that allows users to exchange long voice messages and archive the messages as traditional Chinese knots; and 2) a DIY bracelet with a QR piece that can be scanned to access the archive page between two friends.
General Process: Through the web application, a user initiates an archive page to start and store the voice communications with a friend. The page is only accessible between he/she and his/her friend so that it creates a private space for deep communication. Then, the user can order knotting materials and a QR piece that leads to the archive page. He/she will knot a bracelet as a gift and send it to his/her friend. When the user’s friend receives the QR bracelet, he/she can scan it and play/reply to the archived messages.
Design Highlights:
There are five patterns of knots, each corresponding to a special topic. The meaning of the message will be analyzed through AI and categorized into one of the topics. The corresponding knot will be assigned to represent the message. The design uses a visual clue that is acceptable to both young and old.
When the voice message is not replied to, the knot will appear incomplete. The knot will be completed when both the message receiver replies the sender. The design aims to encourage users to reply and interact with their close ones.
The time in a day will be divided into 12 sessions according to the Chinese ancient way of time-keeping. Knots will be put on the rope according to the time user send the voice message. Users are only allowed to create one knot per 2 hours. This design encourages users to think deeply about their message and use the app in a more emotional & thoughtful way than the WeChat voice message.
The app will provide two options for message input: 1) input through text and use voice clone technologies to generate voiceover for the text message in users’ voices. 2) input voice directly through recording. The design aims to tackle users’ fear of long voice message
While the project aims at encouraging deep intergenerational communication, it is more of a social experiment than a design based on existing needs. Whether we really need deep communication with parents/grandparents or not is left as an open question. Users can have their own opinions about who they want to send the message to, whether they want to communicate through voice, and whether they are more willing to communicate deeply after experiencing the project. Users can choose to record their voices in the recording booth and say something to their close ones, which will be collected and made into an archive that is not open to the public. This archive will indicate how the users think about and use the app and whether the way of communication is changed through experiencing the app.

 
Complementing the documentary, the audio interactive installation provides a dynamic and engaging experience for users. By speaking in the Wu dialect, visitors activate the installation, causing the LED strip to act to every word that the audience speaks in Shanghainese. For more instruction, the audience could read through the dictionary and the instructional tutorial audio in the headphones on the table. The moving LEDs on the strip gives positive rewarding feedback for the audience to provide a better learning experience. One more thing to mention is the aesthetics learned from Jiangnan architecture, history, and culture. The space creates a consistent immersiveness for the audience.

 
LIONFISH is essentially a video essay developed based on a private conversation. The core concept of this project is around the sociological terminology raised by Erving Goffman in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. “People act/behave differently in front of different people.” This seemingly self-evident idea is the origin of my confusion when interacting with others. LIONFISH aims to show the process of identifying the “true self.” Meanwhile, the text/poem merged in the video tells a fictional story of a person looking for their lost phone that keeps a record of who they are. Moreover, the face detection interaction will appear at certain points of the video: sometimes overlapping with people starring in the prepared video, and an illusion of “watching” and “being watched” is delivered to the viewers as they become part of the project itself at those moments. The three parallel yet intertwined elements in the piece altogether create a special immersive experience for the spectators as various things are going on simultaneously, and they get to reflect on the seemingly ordinary fact of “existing.” Also, they will “get caught” off guard as they pay close attention to the project itself: they “forget about themselves” while they become aware of themselves the most.
Additionally, as a video installation, a relatively closed and dark space is created to make the whole experience intimate and private, mimicking the moments when people deeply think about the meaning of being themselves. Reflective materials and mirrors are used in the installation for a dreamy and surreal feeling. When people enter a space full of their reflections and images, they are naturally attracted to themselves. However, when they suddenly realize that they are the center of attention, things will be much more different.
LIONFISH is a project discussing a dualistic, or actually more complex, question. Humans are self-aware, we care about what we say and do in public, yet do we really know who we are? Are the thousands of faces we present fake? Which one is our most natural appearance?