Together Alone by Touch Collective
In an era dominated by digital interactions, the online exhibition Together Alone confronts the paradox of connection and disconnection that defines our virtual world.
Divided into three themes: Social Touch, Digital Intimacy and Touching the Screen, the exhibition delves into the emotional and sensory void left by modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) and modern phenomena such as social networking, online gaming and online dating.
While technology has extended our ability to connect with each other, bridging distances and enabling real-time communication, it has also accentuated the digital divide—not merely as a gap in access but as a break in human intimacy. The impossibility of a real human physical touch in the virtual world underscores the limitations of our interactions in the digital world, revealing the fragility of true, genuine human relationships built on digital foundations. Is a true human connection possible in the virtual world?
Through works by a.o. Thomas Hirschhorn, Noor Nuyten and Paul Semon, Together Alone explores these tensions, examining how the absence of the ability to physically touch each other manifests itself in virtual environments. Furthermore, in an introduction video to the exhibition, LI-MA curator Sanneke Huisman elaborates on her perspective on touch in a digital environment.
Increasingly people establish their lives in the real world and in a digital world. Our online personas, established through social media, can feel just as real as our physical selves and are an essential part of our personality and our lives and critical for our emotional well-being. Who we meet and how we meet and interact is increasingly shaped by algorithms. Together Alone offers a critical look at the emotional and physical estrangement wrought by these technological advancements. By examining the possibility and impossibility of true human connections in the digital age, the exhibition not only critiques our dependence on virtual systems but also seeks to inspire new ways of understanding and options to bridge the digital divide that separates us.
Together Alone invites the visitor to reflect on the spaces in between—where touch becomes memory, connection becomes longing, and humanity persists in a search for closeness. As Sanneke Huisman states: “if artists dare to look for the poetry, digital touch can be intimate."
