We collaborated with French artist Antoine Catala to create Distant Feel, a body of work displayed at both the New Museum Triennial and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The pieces address the way images provoke emotion, especially as they travel virtual and physical distances via the Internet. The work takes an interest in the myriad ways we express feelings through the very technology that increasingly mediates our daily lives. We developed a new approach to the sentiment of empathy, embodied in a symbol. The intent was to create a living mark that could easily be replicated physically and digitally to convey a sense of connection and understanding. Essentially, we created a new logo for empathy, inspired to an extent by the peace symbol.

The scalable mark, in its purest state, is the word “FE3L” or simply “E3,” the two central letterforms facing one another. The facing Es began as a reference to interlocking or helping hands, or two facing bodies. Etymologically, the letter “E” can be traced back to the Semitic “hê,” which has been suggested to have started as a human figure. E is also the most commonly used letter. The letters are balanced forms and easy to re-create, whether drawn in the sand or typed in a post (as #E3). The most elaborate manifestation of the mark—on display at both the New Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art—was made up of living coral suspended in a glowing blue tank of water, mirroring the juxtaposition of the technological and the organic. Other executions included an infinitely scrollable Web experience (distantfeel.com) and three-dimensional photography.

Distant Feel was displayed at both the New Museum Triennial (featuring over fifty artists) and the Carnegie Museum of Art (as an individual exhibition). The artwork was ranked among the “10 Most Interesting Works from the Triennial” by Bloomberg Business, and among the “Six Pieces that Stuck Out at the Triennial” by Forbes. It was also positively reviewed by Cool Hunting, ARTnews and Christie's.