Mediated Body is a portable system invented by Mads Hobye, wherein a performer wearing an interactive suit provokes an engaging experience with a stranger¹. The suit is able to pick up skin on skin contact between the performer and participant, which generates a soundscape that plays back in the headphones worn by both parties. In addition to the sounds, the suit creates ambient coloured light effects to both enhance the touch dynamic and to draw more attention from others in the surroundings. In this way, the suit playfully excuses physical touch between two people that have not met before – breaking the taboo of not being allowed to touch.

Mediated Body essentially makes an interface out of the performer’s and participant’s bodies, creating the opportunity for symbiosis to take place between the two. It is spectacular to see this alternative bare-skin interaction style as touching someone physically is rather personal and intimate. How would you respond when you are approached by a stranger with this suit on? Personally, I would feel curious, excited, and awkward for sure. Perhaps Mediated Body is an overload of intimacy which makes this design so unique but makes it hard to apply in an industrial context. We are convinced of the potential to design more affective and intimate experiences using touch in a playful manner. Maybe, a flirtatious party game that can knock Twister of its throne.

On a final note, we have a recommendation for a prototyping kit to include when coming up with your own ideas. Makey Makey is a company that started as a spinoff at MIT Media Lab that sells a simple kit of wires and a microcontroller with the ability to turn anything that conducts electricity – including the human body – into a touchpad. This set is ideal to involve during ideation or prototyping to come up with playful touch-based interaction concepts.