Lynn Hershman Leeson — Deep Contact

1989

Artists: Lynn Hershman Leeson · Year: 1989 · Medium: Interactive touchscreen video installation · Substrate: Touchscreen interface on CRT display; branching laserdisc video; viewer-controlled narrative · Place: San Francisco, California, USA · Institution: Self-produced; later acquired by SFMOMA Lynn Hershman Leeson's Deep Contact (1989) is the first art installation to use a touchscreen interface. The viewer approaches a monitor, touches areas of a young woman's body on-screen, and triggers different branches of her story — the character reveals different thoughts, memories, and experiences depending on where she is touched. The work is a direct sequel to Lorna (1983), which had pioneered interactive laserdisc narrative, and extends its investigation of agency-within-intimacy into physical user-interface territory. Deep Contact arrives at a specific moment in the history of interface. Touchscreens existed in 1989 — ATMs had deployed them — but they were unusual in consumer contexts and entirely unprecedented in art installations. Hershman Leeson's use of the technology was substantive, not novelty: the viewer's physical touch of the character's on-screen body is the interaction mechanic, and the narrative's treatment of consent, memory, and violence is inextricable from the physicality of that interaction. The work was shown at SFMOMA, the Walker Art Center, and at multiple international festivals. It was widely discussed in feminist and technology criticism of the early 1990s as an early example of women's-body-as-interface as explicit artistic subject. Hershman Leeson has continued to make technology-mediated work across four decades. Deep Contact remains one of her most-cited pieces. Lore The touchscreen hardware was early-generation; the CRT and touchscreen Hershman Leeson used in 1989 is now near-impossible to source for restoration. SFMOMA's preservation effort involved custom emulation to reproduce the touch-sensitive behavior. The piece was filmed with actress Louise Nielsen in collaboration with Hershman Leeson; Nielsen's performance is central to the work's affect. Sources • Hershman Leeson, Lynn — lynnhershman.com • SFMOMA — Deep Contact collection record • Stanford University — Hershman Leeson papers