Teledating project

An artist friend of mine is doing a project that I am very interested in. The concept is very simple; to arrange a dinner on St. Valentine's Day where romantic partners will be eating in separate locations, but connected via video conferencing. The following video is a rough demo of what the event will be. When I was watching the video I noticed some very interesting things about how the partners were pretending to be in the same space. My rational mind instantly started to object, but I was still able to believe in the fiction. There is always a lot of suspension of disbelief when chatting on-line, and it is more noticeable when you can see the other person, but the setting of the dinner table seems to focus this project explicitly on the subject of manners. What are virtual manners? To what extent is social reality an agreed-upon fantasy that makes us blind to unsavory aspects of physical reality? To what extent does being polite alienate us from our animal nature, from our sexuality, from our presence in the moment, in the real world?