Following a speculative design approach, this project imagines an alternative present in which technologically augmented bodies are capable of sharing haptic and tactile stimuli across large distances, and explores the possible consequences this could have for the development of individual and collective identity.

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Building on Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto and Karin Harrasser’s Body 2.0, the project considers the human body as a site of construction in continuous becoming with digital technologies. As such, it aligns with a post-phenomenological tradition that acknowledges technology as shaping reality by altering bodily and sensory capacities. Through this lens, technological developments such as the BrainGate chip, a microchip implanted in the human brain that allows patients to move artificial limbs and perceive haptic stimuli through them, are critically examined in terms of their potential to reshape reality through altered bodily perception. In particular, if such technologies were to be implanted on a larger scale with the premise of enabling remote haptic and tactile communication, the project asks what form bodily intimacy might take, how communication between individuals would change, and, most importantly, how a bodily sense of individuality would be maintained in light of Didier Anzieu’s concept of the Skin Ego. Assuming that bodily identity is strongly bound to the sensation of touch, and that human skin functions as a primary bodily boundary for such experiences, the project acknowledges that technological interventions such as BrainGate implants could fundamentally alter how individuality is formed and understood.

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Three fully functioning, technologically advanced bodysuits were developed, allowing wearers to communicate with one another through touch across distance. Each bodysuit was technologically augmented with capacitive sensors and vibration actuators distributed across multiple locations, enabling wearers to touch others simultaneously by touching themselves at corresponding points. The design of the bodysuits is inspired by human anatomy, distilling it into three distinct layers beneath the skin: fat layers, muscle tissue, and veins and arteries. In doing so, the project externalises what is commonly understood as sacred and untouchable about the human body, namely what lies beneath the skin, in order to foreground the increasing degree of technological intervention into bodily matter.

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Taken together, the project asks what may be gained and what may be lost if such technologies become widely accessible and permanently alter our bodily and sensorial capacities by operating from within the body.