Merging bodies: The application of thermal technology as an expressive tool to investigate touch in the creation of a new Dance screen work

In addressing the notion of environments, we propose our research using thermal technologies in partnership with NHS staff which reflects on the role of touch as a signifier of care, contamination, intimacy and trust.
In dialogue with ICU staff at Whittington Hospital, London we invite reflections on their experiences during the pandemic. Focus will be on alertness to touching and not touching; social and emotional contact and how this, and the expanded boundary of self can be made visible through thermal representation.
Initial discussions with NHS staff have revealed the need amongst frontline staff for a moment of pause to capture personal thoughts on the notion of one body in relation to another, of how touch, so critical in care, has become so guarded through the pandemic. These dialogues will serve as grounding for research with the dancers in which we imagine the relay and forensics of touch, revealing our bodies as overlapping, drawing attention and giving space to these tensions. The visual capture of heat in breath, in the exchange of clothes or in the residue of touch offers the opportunity to explore the environment of the tactile, normally unseen. Earlier experiments revealed the body as extended through time, of detail (heat) emerging and fading, of quiet attention in the presence of viewers.
In understanding the dangers of being together, but also the pressing need for human touch we as artists are interested to express the inherent tensions through the creative and poetic potential of thermal imaging technology, forging new artistic investigations for us and for the field.