Sex on the Stars
I checked my diary one last time. Friday, May 20 at 5 p.m., an appointment at Equinox for my first monthly recharging of erogenous zones and recreation. The girl at the front desk asked me to wait my turn. They would give me a demonstration and afterwards I could visit the « ultimate experience room». Within a few minutes, I was taken to a smaller space where I could relax and watch a video on their services. At that point, I felt much more comfortable. There was nothing that reminded me of old-fashioned sex shops. No shelves with phallus shaped toys or fake silicon-made vaginas. « The world was no longer separated in two. »
This phrase written in bold letters on the flyers at the waiting room caught my attention. From the Theory of Duality in mathematics and physics to the Theory of Dualism in religion and philosophy, the number two has a power equivalent to a natural law governing our life. These theories merely express the state of being in two parts that are complementary : benevolent and malevolent, body and spirit, man and woman, ying and yang, idea and artwork, image and object, software and hardware and of course online and offline.
In today’s fluid world, there is more continuity than separation. Digital and physical world communicate without obvious intermediaries though they have an undeniable material infrastructure. Wi-fi technology enables us to use our computer without cables and make our data fly all the way to the i-cloud. Eventually they fly all the way to the businesses that monitor us but that is another chapter in the big book of life. We are witnesses to a time where the transition from the physical to the digital is normalized, and continous and is shaping a perforated world in mutation. In the future, digital infrastructure and its devices will be almost invisible. By a simple wave of our hand we will activate screens and proceed with our activities touch-less.
In our touch-less lives, the only form of penetration will be the cognitive one. This term is used to decribe the way that technology penetrates in our life, modifying our attitudes, gestures and our brains. In fact, we are not aware of this process but we are becoming more and more aware of its consequences.[1] This penetration is invisible and based on the exchange of energy. Could technology be a way to reach God and not create one or become one as we used to think? Could technology be the intermediary to a divine experience ?
It is no secret, horny monks and nuns have experienced cosmic orgasms. Their heads look at the sky as they feel the love of God, leaving them in an ecstatic state. For example, when visiting the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome there is a magnificient baroque sculpture carved by Bernini depicting the religious ecstasy of a nun called Maria Théresa. Reading her autobiography, it makes you blush. « ..He seemed to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and… to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan.. » Such an exquisite pain and pleasure without penetration. How is this even possible ?
Touch basically means « enter into contact with » but does not indicate the media used. Since our body consiousness is not separated from the consciousness of our mind, in a non-binary world, the ultimate evolution will come when humans with a synergía of body and mind engage vividly with the cosmos by tuning the harmonics of motion of time and space.
The idea that humans are the ultimate technology is still written on the sky, in the topos of ideas, blocked somewhere by a cloud. We cannot see it because our vision was blurred by a palimpseste of tumblr images but it is still there. Our constant need to make images proves our need to shape our world and create its image in order to bring it to life. This can easily become a form of illness, like the bulimia nervosa where we find ourselves in a loop, reconfiguring endlessly preexisting images of the world and exchanging them in touch-less way.
Humanity will eventually understand that a touch-less life is resource consuming whether this resource is time, energy or attention. With nothing to consume anymore we will start ex nihilo, by touching the other in the sense of getting in contact and paying attention in the sense of care. The clouds will go away. Sky and sea will meet again united by cosmic energy.
Back to the utlimate experience room, a swimming pool awaits me in the center of a darkened room. Water is supposed to be a conduit of universal energy. As I was entering the water, I felt the presence of the Other. In the past, I would wear a Fundawear, a wearable technology that enables us to transfer personal touch from a smartphone app to a partner’s underwear. Today, my erogenous zones were aroused immediately without any contact or penetration. There was an exchange of fluids, the meta-fluids that enabled a divine connection and charged me with energy long after going out of the swimming pool. I decided to finish my day at the nearest bar ordering my favorite cocktail « Sex on the Stars ».
[1] This term was quoted in the glossary Online/Offline on April 2016 during a 3-day workshop on art in the post-digital context organised by hd.kepler. in collaboration with 3 137 and Entreprise Projects. The partcipants of the workshop were: James Bridle (artist), Daphne Dragona (curator), Zoe Giabouldaki (artist), Théo Massoulier (artist), Anna Tomczak (representing the collective recto/verso), Philippe Riss (curator, founder of xpo).
recto/verso 