CON/TOUCH #2 is a collaborative musical instrument. It consists of two wireless wearable sensors designed to measure haptic gestures on the shoulders, which are worn by two individuals. The sensors’ signals are sent to a software synthesiser that generates frequencies and modulates the sound’s parameters based on the input from the sensors.

The experience of ‘playing’ CON/TOUCH #2 is neither exclusively musical nor only performative; rather it is at the same time a synaesthetic experience and an exploration of new (creative) possibilities that at the same time address social relations, explore the threshold of intimacy between the players (touch), and demand engaged participation.

The instrument shows how the simple gestures of human interactions could rearticulate performances that engage the intimacy of the body in relationship with social behaviours and technology. The sound and the elective context transform the simple gestures in an always different performative action, according to who is playing and auditing in that moment.

CON/TOUCH #2 is a form of experimentation of the virtual realm that does not renounce physical contact, thus opening critical reflections within embodied and intimate haptic experiences of the boundaries between bodies, perspectives, and personalities.