Location: Media Commons (2nd Floor 220)

Come experience and be the performers of Two Subtle Bodies to connect with others through your auditory and tactile senses! It's an interactive artwork that unlocks new ways of connecting with each other by extending your sense of self to others. After the experience, you'll be invited to have a brief chat and share feelings with your partner who you're matched with.

Two people can experience at the same time, and each experience takes about 5 minutes. You can come by anytime during the session hours.

The piece was commissioned and supported by the Korean Cultural Center in Washington, DC, Embassy of the Republic of Korea, and recently premiered at Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. as a part of Sound Scene.

🟡 "What are we going to experience?" 🟡

Two Subtle Bodies (2022) by Yeseul Song with sound design collaboration from Jesse Simpson and Greg Halleran, garment design collaboration and production by Daniel Ryan Johnston.

Two Subtle Bodies is an interactive auditory experience where two strangers walking inside a space experience each other’s peripersonal space. As the two bodies move together, they generate and listen to sounds through bone conduction that correspond dynamically and in real time to their movements. The subtle body is a concept that appears in Taoism and Dharmic religions to indicate bodies that are neither solely physical nor solely spiritual, in contrast to the mind-body dualism that has dominated western thought. In neurology, the space surrounding a body is called Peripersonal Space and enabled by visuo-tactile senses. By recognizing and perceiving this soft and fluid space between us, we can unlock new ways of connecting with each other by extending the sense of self and others. Imagine you can hear a stranger’s subtle body through sound. Will this bring us closer?