Both Hands Their Backs Rubbing, 2020, single channel 4k video with sound, 5’05’’ |camera: Fan Xiaochuan

Both Hands Their Backs Rubbing (Transcript), 2020, mechanical typewriter in false operation, size variable

Both Hands Their Backs Rubbing explores ways of co-writing with input method in accordance with a clumsy study of Taoist hand gestures.

The standard QWERTY keyboard has accommodated me with the optimized setting of typing gestures to reduce fingers crossing to the minimum. On the contrary, the Taoist hand gestures are almost against ergonomics. Choreographed to communicate with celestial beings, it is its complexity that assures the efficacy of mediation that it entails: exclusively and erratically. Yet, with fingers in spasm, what is auxiliary is the myriad of miscommunication. The hands as the medium transmit dubious messages to the cosmic information environment.

As I got used to my Macbook’s Touch Bar, a capacitive touchscreen that associates and predicts words like a spiritual medium, I came to associate its spectral attributes to Taoist hand gestures. Lay right in front of the typing person and placed in between the keyboard and the screen, the Touch Bar in the disguise of an alternative output start to meddle with my decision making.

word-to-word EN transcript of the text generated/tapped in the video:

“Both hands their backs rubbing right ring finger hooked left middle finger right index finger from the inside hooked right ring finger and left middle finger left big finger pinky ring finger reach beneath the key- board the symbol vortex right big finger pinky ring finger data tenta- cles reach to the sky swing dance diffusing a spore oval or inverted ovoid both hands their backs rubbing right ring finger press the end of the eye a centimeter thick white fluff input method threw a dice all players need to be blindfolded by a red cloth losing the subject of speech mechanical hands elbows and wrists hanging in the air will appear like a ghost floating flame 🔥”