LiveForm:Telekinetics distributed networked senses experiments and recipes for connected social spaces, rituals, recipes, food, people, bric-a-brac, hacked objects, electronics, and toys

LiveForm:Telekinetics

Telepresence Picnic sighting
Perth, Australia

LF:TK at The 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale : Media City Seoul 2006
LF:TK at ISEA2006
LF:TK part of Say It Now! Festival at Vooruit, Gent.
LF:TK at ARCO, Madrid
Second prize winner in the Vida 8.0 Art & Artificial Life International Competition!
featured in the book Connected! LiveArt from Waag Society

Experiments in Connected Social Spaces - LF:TK - Kinetic Live Art through the Internet

a project by Jeff Mann & Michelle Teran

Digital networks extend communication across distance and time. How might they influence the forms of our daily social interaction? Sharing a meal, a walk in the park, making music, sports or games - these are the kind of social activities and rituals we use to build meaningful relationships. But the typewriter keyboard and computer screen are artifacts of a business machine that seem out of place here. What if the interface allowed for body language, gesture, and physicality? What if you could go out for dinner and dancing with friends, even though you're a thousand kilometers away?

The LiveForm:Telekinetics (LF:TK) project re-imagines the familiar objects and utensils of our everyday social spaces as an electronically activated play environment, capable of transmitting over distance the physical presence and social gesture that comprise such a vital element of human interaction. Furniture, decorations, cutlery, doodads, and bric-a-brac come to life as both kinetic art and telecommunication interfaces, building a complex arrangement of movement and gesture. Imagine a shared creation, a social ritual, a dance through objects, an electric dinner-table that is played.

LF:TK creates these experiences in transgeographic temporary performance zones, centred around wireless Internet access points that are now ubiquitous in the urban landscape. No longer tied to a terminal screen and keyboard, nomadic groups pack mobile feasts of sensors, antennas, robotics, food, and music, and head out on the town. Networked telepresence picnic parties unfold in vacant lots, roadsides, cafés, alleyways, bars, and hotel lobbies - wherever bandwidth is plentiful and security guards scarce.

LF:TK is an artistic proposition for a reimagination of networked reality. The events are not meant as entertainment for an audience, but as experimental and collaborative acts of creativity, research and development of new social forms, and interventions in public space.

This wiki is a growing archives of recipes, stories, observations and techniques developed within the LF:TK Test Kitchen, serving as guides and inspirations for everyday hybrid realities.

Long Description Here

Social Protocols for a Telepresence Picnic

Scenarios

The Telepresence Picnic
Description | Video

The Telematic Dinner Party
Description | Video