SENTICS 2.0: the touch of
by chris wood / matte_screen
SENTICS 2.0 is a process and a processing, an event for re/collection, de/encryption, and re/incorporation of the complex emotional scripts and memories from our digital experience. The event is facilitated by chris wood’s performance avatar, matte_screen, who demonstrates how to engage and embody the potential of our avatar’s emotions. Memories typed and submitted by the audience are live-encrypted, visualized, and projected into a virtual memorial space, and somatic engagement with elastic bands throughout the space affects the sound felt in the room and the gravity felt in the body. Comfort Station's interior becomes an imaginary AFK social media instance - generating space for digital-self-cultivation, through queer blurring of the ‘virtual’ and the ‘actual’, practiced attunement to communal processing, and a generous embrace of the integrity of the avatar.
Deepest gratitude to Courtney Mackedanz for their support in the research, development, and installation of the ongoing project of SENTICS.
chris wood is a multimedia artist and technician based in Chicago. they make performances and installations exploring the physical/emotional properties of sound as media for communal processing. they create social experiments and performative events questioning our screen-based reality in an effort to embrace, embody, and attune emotional complexities with ourselves and each other. They are an MFA graduate of Mills College CCM, they work as the AV Systems Manager at The Art Institute of Chicago, are a DJ under the moniker of Disco Crystall, and are a member of the anti-disciplinary artist collective Mocrep.
matte_screen is a cybernetic-self/artist/facilitator conceived of the animated code written by artist Chris Wood. in recent practice embodying this avatar, wood/matte_screen has been developing a multimedia practice of Sentics—a therapeutic approach to understanding and unlocking our emotional memories through gravity and pressure as instigated by neuroscientist Manfred Clynes.