Interactive performance. Touch-based communication technology.
Digitalized at your Service is an interactive performance in which a group of messengers dressed in provocative red uniforms offer the service of transmitting confidential messages between spectators in an unconventional way: through touch.
The use of portable electronic devices and the capacitance of the human body allows viewers to transfer messages by touching the messenger’s skin in Morse Code. The messages travel as electrical pulses through the unassuming, unaffected and unsuspecting body of the messenger who then carries the encoded message to the recipient among the viewers.
This project arose in 2002 and was inspired by communication technologies -emerging at that time- that involve the human body in a network of data exchange. The uncomfortable idea of data flowing through my body, and the promise of these technologies of enabling more humane ways of communicating and transmitting data, inspired me to develop this touch-based communication technology.
The work explores the possible implications of this technology in an intimate and provocative way. Through an interactive performance, we become participants and witnesses of a strange semantic experiment around the notion of touch and communication: a scene of people touching each other in unusual ways, fingers touching the perishable language of Morse Code, the re-configuration of the social conventions of touch…
Digitalized at your Service engages viewers in the discreet disappearance of the technological interface, at the same time that it captures them in a strange mix of chemical, electrical, perceptual, and cultural encodings that occur in the communication process. As we marvel at the magic of the technology, we are taking part in a re-coding of the natural and the unveiling of new materialities in communication.
Digitalized at your Service was funded by the Sitemapping grant from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture in 2006. It was presented at the Cabaret Voltaire during the Digital Artweeks festival in Zürich in 2007 and at the Picnic Festival in Amsterdam 2007.
Concept: Valerie Bugmann.
Technical Development: Dylan Chan Tinlun, Valerie Bugmann.
Actors: Simona Hofmann, Nadine Tobler, Martina Richter, Sara Bugmann, Jonas Gillmann.
Costume Design: Alexandra Bugmann.
Documentation: Andi Hofmann, Remo Hexpoor