Concept: sensorium studio.lab
Special thanks to Nitish Bhardwaj
WIP's:
Fameus Zirkzaal,
Broei vzw, CC t Vondel
Unity, Arduino IDE
To know you by hand is a participatory VR experience where visitors meet each other solely through their hands and heartbeats. Wearing headsets and sensors, two participants enter a dark virtual space. Identity is stripped away — no names, no faces, only motion.
This silent, embodied encounter invites people to explore intimacy and trust in ways that bypass assumptions and language. It is a meeting between strangers who, in real life, might never speak to one another.
The experience challenges our confidence in body language. Many participants begin certain of their ability to communicate through gesture, only to realise how little they know about speaking without words. Some mirror each other. Some attempt conversation. Some play quiet games with their fingers. Each pair discovers their own rhythm.
This shared unknowing creates a space of openness — one where people encounter each other with fresh attention. Anonymity becomes a condition for connection, not a barrier.
When we think of hands, we most probably think of their role in non-verbal communication – how they express emotions and form the image of you – and how they are used to physically connect with each other. To fully experience the role of hands, it is therefore only right to isolate everything, and even the physicality of hands, to have no knowledge of who's standing in front of you. And what's interesting - how do people begin to communicate then? What exactly would they understand? And finally, would they be ready to get close and touch? And hear the heartbeat of fear and strange comfort?
This work has been designed as a participatory VR experience with noise-canceling headphones – to isolate from the physical world – and with heartbeat sensors – to add an additional layer to human connection: at the end of the day, hearts say more than controlled body language.
No participant knows the identity of other participants, and each participant decides the length of their experience. The work allows people to come in and come out at their pace, with 2 to 10 participants per time.
This work has been inspired by:
The Machine To Be Another – BeAnotherLab
JeL – John Desnoyers-Stewart, Ekaterina R. Stepanova, Philippe Pasquier, Bernhard E. Riecke
Effects of Touch – Pepi Ng
Generator – Marina Abramovic
