| About the workshop: |
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Skinship:Sensumates, is about somatic intelligence and our relationships to objects and technology. It is an exploration of Qualitas, which is how we sense our existence, sense our sensing, and what some believe is lacking from AI and technology which keeps it from being fully intelligent or conscious.
In previous iterations of Skinship, participants have played an alien hive-mind-like lifeform, seeking out intelligence in a new world through their senses, sounding out the somatic landscape together and gathering knowledge of this new world and what they find there. Earlier runs have included interactions with soft robotics, or creating hive-minds over computer networks separated by space and time. This iteration will prototype new devices made by Ploetz, which will be programed to sense and sound out somatic qualities with the participants. Will this create Qualitas, for the devices, or a synergistic techno-somatic Qualitas in-between the humans and devices? Will it simulate Qualitas, could that be enough to generate some new form or definition of consciousness? This larp will be conducted in English, but please be in touch if you are afraid the language barrier might prevent you from participating but you would like to. Snacks will be provided and please wear something comfortable. 
| About Susan Ploetz: |
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Susan Ploetz is an artist-researcher working with somatics, theory, writing, performance, sound, simulation and live action role plays (larping) in different configurations. Her work deals with the overlapping spaces of soma and technos; she uses imagination, magical materiality, and protocol to induce emancipatory emotive dissonances and perceptual expansion. She explores body-centered game design and narrative-building play as co-creative world-making that develops individual agency within spontaneous, ephemeral, decentralized communities. She has presented work at such institutions as the Berliner Festspiele/Martin Gropius Bau, Oude Kerk, Sophiensaele, Documenta 13, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Aoyama Gakuin University, Unsound, and Performa. |
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