Performersion|The function of Touch Feedbacks in VR Without Haptic Mechanics

Ramona Mosse, Gerko Egert, Melanie Jame Wolf Haptic feedback for total immersion is central to many visions of virtual reality applications. The promise to be in contact with all the senses with another person in another place in the world fuels many research branches and start-ups. But previous solutions such as Teslasuit, Neurolace, Ultrahaptics and much more are extremely complicated, resource-intensive and complex interfaces. On the other hand, we all know that artists on stage can touch people in the audience without physically touching them. The fact that this stage craft also works in VR applications has been impressively demonstrated by groups such as MAKROPOL, Bombina Bombast and Polymorf in their performances. Which transmissions can be found here between stagecraft and technology development? The dance scholar Gerko Egert, who has written the current standard work on touch and touching in dance, and Ramona Mosse, dramaturg and academic visionary, and the artist Melanie Jame Wolf, whose work focuses on ideas and questions of persona and staging, discuss utopian and practical models of intimacy and contact in VR. This format is part of the Performersion, a cooperation of re:publica and Performing Arts Programm Berlin.