Reconnecting in a contactless world feels like one of the biggest challenges to building intimacy with new people. Meeting strangers offline has become close to impossible; it is all happening online in endless stacks of profiles to look through. We wondered, is bumping into strangers or getting a feel for someone before reading their bio still a possibility?
Introducing FOR PLAY – a first-of-its-kind digital foreplay platform where touching comes first. Created in collaboration with Moniker, the Amsterdam-based design studio researching the social effects of technology, and Steve O Connell Studio in Dublin, the platform was conceived as a form of foreplay to dating on the Feeld app.
Visitors to feeldforplay.com can digitally touch, tease and flirt with real humans globally using anonymised video stream. Grouping up to four participants in a virtual room, FOR PLAY is the virtual sensory experience that allows you to share something with a stranger before seeing their profile.
You can continue the flirt in the Feeld app by joining the FOR PLAY virtual location where you can connect and chat with other humans from the platform.
Feeld has a history of collaborating with and supporting artists and cultural projects, from illustrators and independent type designers to a print literary journal. Speaking of Moniker's collaboration with Feeld, artist and designer Luna Maurer explained the intention behind creating a digital artwork based on live participation:
‘We are entering an era marked by blurred boundaries between the artificial and the physical, a clash between human flesh and rational data. We are massively surrendering our physical selves to the virtual, therefore we at Moniker are super excited to work together with the extraordinary dating-app Feeld. They focus on bringing people together and celebrating the human body with all its desires, while at Moniker we are fascinated by the romantic effects that technology can have on our behaviour.’ – Luna Maurer, Moniker
Because desire needs a space for play.
