Contact/less
Contactless Technologies have increasingly entered the financial terrain of small payments, reducing the transaction to the waving of a card over the payment terminal, or at the touch of a thumb with biometrics integrated into mobile phones, forming a new material encounter of the everyday transaction. Using Near-field-Communication technology, contactless devices produce an electromagnetic induction via its internal antenna and data is transmitted via radio waves between the card and the payment terminal at a maximum distance of 4cm.
This 4cm is a critical micro-space in which multiple reinventions of contact take place, and to which my research practice sits.
Through the dissection of the term Contact/less, I provoke the ways in which contact, or a lack thereof, operates within the 4cm threshold of contactless exchange. Through mobilising Contact/less as a lens to analyse other socio-sensual conditions at the level of the urban, of sensing and identifying objects at a distance, and the politics of data aggregation in the banking sector. I use film, essay and haptic methods of making to explore the ambiguities and absences of touch in contactless.
10.34 minutes. Presented at Common Sensing, MA Research Architecture Exhibition, Goldsmiths University of London, September 2019
This short essay film explores the relationship between contactless technology and the corporeal experience of contact through the choreography of two contact improvisation dancers, Kate and Mira.
The film began as a series of conversations that navigated how the 4cm of contactless exchange could help us understand the ambiguity of touch.
Co-filmed with Jessye Curtis.
The Internal Architecture of the Hand
The Internal Architecture of the Hand is a short essay film which investigates methods of biometric identification introduced in payment infrastructures via palm vein scanning, which requires only the hand, and a mapping of its veined architecture for a financial transaction. The film follows the process of producing a mould of a hand, as infrared casts an algorithmic mould of one’s biometric data.
Stills from The Internal Architecture of the Hand. 5.32 Minutes. Presented at Common Sensing, MA Research Architecture Exhibition, Goldsmiths University of London, September 2019
Sir John Soane's Bust
Sir John Soane's Bust is a performative lecture and film as part of MA Research Architecture Spring Crit 2019 at St John Church in Bethnal Green, exploring the management of touch and colonial logics of the John Soane Museum and British Museum. 9.35 Minutes.
