Shared Objective Empathy in Telematic Space

This chapter discusses the juncture between empathy and presence pronounced in my telematic artworks that converge space and distant audience participants in telepresent interactive video installations. The discussion will focus on three specific works that chart the kinaesthetic and proprioceptive nature of my practice, which include Telematic Dreaming first shown in 1992, Peace Talks from 2003 and Touched produced in 2017. All these works have involved networked videoconference technology, but range in contextual installation settings, from the intimacy of a bed surface to a peace negotiations table and the keyboard of an online chat conversation. Through each of these works I will present and discuss the empathetic nature of the participant’s interactions and experiences that I have encountered since the early 90s, recounted through the conversations, observations and stories I have witnessed in the production and realisation of these works. The theories and concepts I have encountered in my work are firstly experienced within them; it is not until I have publically installed and observed them that I am able to articulate them through the concepts and philosophical discourses they reflect, from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s extension of the bodily synthesis to Gregory Bateson’s cybernetic accounts of extended minds and Roy Ascott’s doubled consciousness.