Daniel Pinheiro, Lisa Parra, and Annie Abrahams (2019)

With the earliest trials of this project dating back to 2015, Distant Feeling(s) is a yearly performance series now hosted by Zoom where participants sit quietly over video chat with their eyes closed and try to sense their physical presence being mediated by a webcam. This recording is Distant Feeling(s) #6’s performance with comments from earlier iterations. It uses a free platformed called Zoom, which most of us are familiar with by this point. In this way, the project has recently taken on a new meaning.

Distant Feeling(s) critiques and explores our relationships to the internet and a digitally mediated representation of ourselves. Along with this, however, uses open-sourced technology to create meaning, arguing that using them is subverting the convention of software designed to be capitalized on. The project asks: "Can we find novelty in an already established system, and act from within, towards (an)other purpose(s)?"

The theme of open-sourced software being integral to the process and meaning of pieces is shared with projects like "HF Critical Mass software applied to la revolucion." This theme is also emphasized in their about page, quoting: "Distant Feeling(s) highlights in its genesis and continuity the need to feel/sense presence and suggests a pragmatical approach for reshaping a consciousness on kinship resorting to available technological tools which have been transforming its meaning."