Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat create ‘meeting places’ in public spaces.
These ‘meeting places’ – performances and installations – are designed as seductive, visual environments. The ‘meeting places’ function as artistic ‘social laboratories’ in which the audience is ‘co-researcher’. Here  the artists invite their audience to experiment and play with social technologies – and to reflect on their own perception of body, identity and community. Lancel and Maat research contemporary social systems in a mediated society, including new parameters for online trust. For every ‘meeting place’ the artists develop an especially designed montage of physical and virtual interaction. Through their ‘meeting places’ Lancel and Maat show social portraits of urban mediated life.
Shows: Ars Electronica Linz, Austria // ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany // De Appel Amsterdam, NL // Transmediale Berlin, Germany // Eyebeam, New York, USA // Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NL // Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, NL // Artfair Artforum Berlin, Germany // Urban Screens 08, Melbourne, AUS // ISEA 04 Helsinki, Finland // Biennale Villette Numerique, Paris, France // Art Center Nabi, Seoul, South-Korea // Smart Project Space Amsterdam, NL  // Chinese European Art Center-CEAC  //  The Second Art @ Science International Exhibition/Symposium, Beijing, China // Dutch Institute for Media Art Amsterdam (NIMK), NL // V2_LAB for Unstable Media  Rotterdam, NL // Second new media Art Exhibition and Symposium at Millennium Art Museum Beijing, China // Banff New Media Institute Canada.

project description ‘TELE_TRUST’

How do we trust each other? Do you need to see my eyes to trust me? Or do we need to touch each other? And how do we trust each other online?

TELE_TRUST researches parameters for online trust, exploring emotional and social tension between visibility, privacy and trust in our social eco-system. To develop innovative urban design and social processes for a sustainable society, TELE_TRUST connects knowledge in different geographical and networked cultures by:

1) TELE_TRUST on social trust and its consequences for designing urban space
In the workshop participants will set parameters for both physical and online experiences of trust; relating to family life, urban life, street life in both traditional and future Chinese urban society. These parameters are further developed as practical and visual design starting points, to create  processes for new social structures and meeting places in the urban domain.

2) Interactive city
In the TELE_TRUST city intervention the artists invite the audience for an innovative experiential tool, scanning online trust in augmented public and private space. The audience puts on a full body data-veil, inspired by a monks’ habit, Darth Vader, a business suit. With flexible touch sensors woven into the smart fabric, the wearer’s body becomes a wireless, intuitive and tangible interface allowing connection with an online audience.

Who is watching you now? The watching audience can unveil the wearers’ face online by touching their touch phone screen – and share globally via audio emotions of trust.
Everybody can wear a data-veil. User generated content is continuously added to a data-base and website. Stories from different cities and countries weave together into an exchanging narrative and distributed tapestry – creating an engaging agora on the notion of trust.

Provided by TELE_TRUST: Iphones, Iphone application and data-veils.

Thanks to: V2_Lab for unstable media NL, Banff New Media Institute Canada, Mondriaan Foundation, Lumineus Amersfoort, AZIZ, AFK NL, AHK research group Amsterdam.

See http://www.lancelmaat.nl