Haptic Cameras in use
Cameras Design
Cameras 3D print
Haptic/Visual Identities is a practical/theoretical artistic research that explores new forms of identity construction from the perspective of embodied intersubjectivity in moving image media to be achieved by a change from a visually-based form of image to a collaborative, relational, haptic one, which empower participating subjects. This happens by shift of power in camera control done by means of a set of DIY digital media devices made up of open source hardware and software. These media create a cyborg like situation (Haraway 1990) which focus on two goals: to generate reciprocal loops between the roles of a subject and an object in film making; and to create embodied, unstable haptic video footages using devices attached to the participants’ bodies. This situation creates a positive potential of exploring this technology as a cooperative performance of self representation.
Our research prototypes are not individualized, “solipsistic” digital devices like smartphones/tablets, but are four different cameras used simultaneously by two people. They create a hybrid and fragmented experience of one’s own and the other’s point of view. This unusual perspective and mixing touch with vision create a deterritorializing experience for the body, a displacement of the senses and codependency in sensual cognition. The collaborative images or moving images created this way are challenging the traditional visuality, its dependence on objective (with all its political connotations) point of view and power relations embedded in the relations between subject and object of the camera’s eye. Displacement of the "eyes to hands” in the design of the prototype and the collaborative character of the work at a crossing between art and research has political, artistic and epistemological consequences we are working on to demonstrate in performance, video and flesh-out in research.
Project Authors:
Haptic/Visual Identities is an international, collaborative art/research project started in 2015, in Canada and created by Agata Mergler and Cristian Villavicencio.
Agata Mergler: researcher, academic teacher, translator, artist, is currently a PhD candidate (ABD) in Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto. She specializes in media theory, digital humanities, comparative literature, digital art and cultural translation. Her Humanities dissertation topic is tentatively called “Cultural Translation of Latin American Digital Art”. She holds a PhD in philosophy (2010), with general field of German philosophy of 20th century, and specialization in hermeneutics, phenomenology and neo-kantianism. Altogether her current interests encompass deterritorialization, the minor/minority, cultural translation and hybridity in media, with a special focus on art, literature and the digital as well as work and relevance of Walter Benjamin in the context of the above.
https://www.instagram.com/agamer21/
Cristian Villavicencio: artist and researcher is currently carrying out his Ph.D. project titled “The materiality of the moving image” at the University of the Basque Country, and is a professor in Department of Visual Arts, at Universidad de las Artes in Guayaquil, Ecuador since 2017. His work develops new ways of perception and mise en scène of the moving image and its relationship with the spectator and the concepts of vision and body. In 2016 he received a fellowship from Guggenheim Foundation for a residency in New York. His works were exhibited in Museo Guggenheim Bilbao - España; Festival Ars Electronica en Linz- Austria. His artwork was also shown in a solo exhibition in Porto this summer 2016, in Fernando Santos Gallery. He participated in art and research residencies in Toronto, Linz and Pekin.
http://www.cristianvillavicencio.net
Agata Mergler: researcher, academic teacher, translator, artist, is currently a PhD candidate (ABD) in Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto. She specializes in media theory, digital humanities, comparative literature, digital art and cultural translation. Her Humanities dissertation topic is tentatively called “Cultural Translation of Latin American Digital Art”. She holds a PhD in philosophy (2010), with general field of German philosophy of 20th century, and specialization in hermeneutics, phenomenology and neo-kantianism. Altogether her current interests encompass deterritorialization, the minor/minority, cultural translation and hybridity in media, with a special focus on art, literature and the digital as well as work and relevance of Walter Benjamin in the context of the above.
https://www.instagram.com/agamer21/
Cristian Villavicencio: artist and researcher is currently carrying out his Ph.D. project titled “The materiality of the moving image” at the University of the Basque Country, and is a professor in Department of Visual Arts, at Universidad de las Artes in Guayaquil, Ecuador since 2017. His work develops new ways of perception and mise en scène of the moving image and its relationship with the spectator and the concepts of vision and body. In 2016 he received a fellowship from Guggenheim Foundation for a residency in New York. His works were exhibited in Museo Guggenheim Bilbao - España; Festival Ars Electronica en Linz- Austria. His artwork was also shown in a solo exhibition in Porto this summer 2016, in Fernando Santos Gallery. He participated in art and research residencies in Toronto, Linz and Pekin.
http://www.cristianvillavicencio.net
Recent Events:
- 11 January - 1 February 2019 our work "Garden Exercises” takes part in a group exhibition “(natura naturata)" at Violenta gallery in Guayaquil, Ecuador;
- November- December 2018 our work "Garden Exercises” takes part in a group exhibition “This is what I call contemporary" at naw!naw!naw gallery in Cuenca, Ecuador
- June 2018 paper presentation “Haptic Moving Image and Embodiment in Filming” in Cinema and Contemporary Visual Art section at NECS conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and a artistic performance with haptic cameras at Cafe Cher Cher at Amsterdam University Library;
- article published: Mergler, Agata and Cristian Villavicencio, "Collaboration, Media, Praxis: Haptic/Visual Identities Project” in post(s). Volumen 3. Agosto 2017, pp. 226-245. https://www.usfq.edu.ec/publicaciones/posts/Documents/posts_0003/11PraxisMerglerVilla.pdf
- November- December 2018 our work "Garden Exercises” takes part in a group exhibition “This is what I call contemporary" at naw!naw!naw gallery in Cuenca, Ecuador
- June 2018 paper presentation “Haptic Moving Image and Embodiment in Filming” in Cinema and Contemporary Visual Art section at NECS conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and a artistic performance with haptic cameras at Cafe Cher Cher at Amsterdam University Library;
- article published: Mergler, Agata and Cristian Villavicencio, "Collaboration, Media, Praxis: Haptic/Visual Identities Project” in post(s). Volumen 3. Agosto 2017, pp. 226-245. https://www.usfq.edu.ec/publicaciones/posts/Documents/posts_0003/11PraxisMerglerVilla.pdf