Can social engagement and reflection be designed through social touch in today’s smart city’s public spaces? This paper explores ludic, playful design for shared engagement and reflection in public spaces through social touch. In two Artistic Social Labs (ASL), internationally presented in public spaces, a radically unfamiliar sensory synthesis is acquired, for which perception of ‘who sees and who is being seen, who touches and who is being touched’ is disrupted. Participants playfully ‘touch themselves and feel being touched, to connect with others on a screen’. On the basis of the findings in the ASLs, guidelines are proposed for orchestrating social engagement and reflection, through social touch as play.@en

Can a multi-sensory model of disruption be designed for shared social touch in public space of merging realities? This paper presents a multi-sensory model for disruption design for shared social touch experience in public space of merging realities. This model is based on analysis of three different artistic orchestrations performed in the public space across the world. In these orchestrations participants' intimate and sensorial experience of social touch is purposefully disrupted and re-orchestrated. These orchestrations are designed to enable participants to feel, see, hear and share a disrupted touch experience, in the social context of the public space. The model provides as frame of reference for designing an experience of shared social touch, for scientists, designers and artists.@en

Experience of touching and feeling touched is fundamental to human well-being, of safety and trust. Being in touch with others can be emotional and spiritual, it enables space for movement and transformation: to touch, kiss, play, dance, make love, tune and breath together. Until recently, research into Human Computer Interaction has focussed on the performative potential of technology and physiological aspects of social touch; and less on human experience. However, recent research shows that ethical aspects of vulnerability, inclusiveness, agency, autonomy, responsibility and response ability, and trust are core to human experience of technically mediated social touch. Recent neuroscience research focuses on mirror neuron activity in empathic processes through touch; on synaesthetic mirror-touch perception; and on body ownership perception in visuo-haptic motor data interaction. Media Performance Art has started to explore digital systems for shared experience of sensory, intercorporal connections and emphatic spectatorship with human and non-human others, in various hybrid social and spatial configurations. This thesis expands these emergent and fragmented foci in a new, interdisciplinary Art, HCI, Design and Neuro Science perspective, for distributed, hybrid, XR, online, human-agent and robot interaction. The thesis shows the importance for new performance scripts, for orchestrating ‘Shared Social Touch’: Shared embodied intimate experience of technically mediated social touch, for multiple participants. A first interaction model for orchestrating social touch: ‘Can I Touch You Online?’ (CITYO) is presented to this purpose. This novel interaction model has been tested internationally, in six participatory case-studies, Artistic Social Labs (ASL). These ASLs have made use of innovative A.I. Facial Technologies, Streaming platforms and Multi-Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) in multi actor networks. They have been designed to facilitate a new sense of bodily togetherness between familiar and unfamiliar others, lovers, friends, family, and strangers. The literature, and testing insights, show that performance scripts for Shared Social Touch experience rely on the design of a) Sensory Disruption (of physical touching and being touched, in reciprocal influence, and shared empathic vulnerable interplay) combined with b) Shared Reflection on the experience, through hosted dialogue. The research method has been based on combined Artist Research and Research through Design. The CITYO interaction model support these characteristics and present new perspectives for Art, Design, HCI and Science, and Education, on emotional well-being (including social connection, disconnection, and isolation (e.g. through trauma, dementia, depression); neurodiversity and autism) design of e-learning and presence design; in hybrid, A.I., XR, mixed and merging realities. @en

This paper introduces art and research on disrupted, touch in networked environments in which realities merge. Aesthetic sensory disruption and haptic distribution are purposefully designed for reflection, in a new type of ‘dialogue space’. The effects of embodied cognition, with respect to trust and experience, are explored in Artistic Social Labs (ASLs) designed to this purpose. Two ASLs are described in this paper.@en

Can shared intimate experience of social touch be mediated through multi-brain-computer interface (Multi-brain BCI) interaction in public space? Two artistic EEG KISS orchestrations, both multi-modal, multi-brain BCIs, are shown to create novel shared experiences of social touch in public space. These orchestrations purposefully disrupt and translate known forms of face-to-face connection and sound, to re-orchestrate unfamiliar sensory syntheses of seeing, hearing, touching and moving, connected to data-visualization and audification of brain activity. The familiar sensory relations between ‘who you kiss and who is being kissed, what you see and what you hear’ are captured in a model of digital synaesthetics in multi-modal multi brain BCI interaction for social touch. This model links hosted self-disclosure, witnessing, dialogue and reflection to intimate experience in public space through syntheses of the senses. As such, this model facilitates the design of new shared intimate experiences of multi modal multi brain BCI interaction through social touch in public space.@en

This paper explores the design space for shared intimate experience of Brain Computer Interaction (BCI) for mirror processes and reflection. Two experiments in BCI-mediated Artistic Social Labs, in which participants (actors and observers), interact withmulti-modal representations of EEGs of kissing, provide new insights on the design of disruption and engagement for reflection, providing new forms of mirroring in shared space. These results are fundamental to the social construction of BCI based, trans-human embodied cognitionand relations, as well as for future BCI communication design and mirror-processes.@en

Can shared experience and dialogue on social touch be orchestrated in playful smart public spaces? In smart city public spaces, in which physical and virtual realities are currently merging, new forms of social connections, interfaces and experiences are be- ing explored. Within art practice, such new connections include new forms of affective social communication with additional social and sensorial connections to enable and enhance empathic, intimate experience in playful smart public space. This chapter explores a novel design for shared intimate experience of playful social touch in three orchestrations of ‘Saving Face’, in different cultural and geographical environments of smart city (semi-) public spaces, in Beijing, Utrecht, Dessau-Berlin. These orchestrations are purposefully designed to create a radically unfamiliar sensory synthesis to disrupt the perception of ‘who sees and who is being seen, who touches and who is being touched’. Participants playfully ‘touch themselves and feel being touched, to connect with others on a screen’. All three orchestrations show that shared experience and dialogue on social touch can be mediated by playful smart cities tech- nologies in public spaces, but rely on design of mediated, intimate and exposed forms of ‘self-touch for social touch’, ambivalent relations, exposure of dialogue and hosting.@en

Is human hosting essential to social touch in the public space of merging realities? This paper explores the role of hosting in art and design for mediating social touch in public space, social robotics, virtual reality and tele-matic environments. The question of whether human hosting is essential to social touch was the focus of three experiments held during performance of artistic orchestrations designed for social touch in public space for which the effects of different hosting designs have been analyzed. These internationally presented orchestrations, Saving Face (2012) and Master Touch (2013), purposefully disrupt and re-orchestrate multi-sensory connections in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways, to evoke shared reflection and shared sense making in public space, mediated by a host. Saving Face was orchestrated internationally in museums, urban public spaces and theatres, including; 56th Venice Biennale 2015; Connecting Cities Network Ber-lin/Dessau 2013; 3th TASIE Art-Science exhibition, Science & Technology Museum Beijing 2013; Beijing Culture & Art Center BCAC 2015-2016. Master Touch was orchestrated at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 2013. This paper extends the multi-sensory interaction model for social touch described in (Lancel et al. 2019e) to explicitly include the role of a host. The question this paper addresses is whether the host needs to be human. This paper calls for future design of disrupted social touch in merging realities to consider hosting processes of shared sense making. Such design should facilitate new forms of reciprocal embodied interaction, that support descriptive self-disclosure, dialogue and shared reflection on experience of social touch in merging realities.@en