Synthetic Touch: A Dialogue Between Flesh and Code
Description
Synthetic Touch: A Dialogue Between Flesh and Code is a short film set in a Chinese factory that manufactures life-sized AI dolls. Through tightly cropped, abstract shots—silicone poured like concrete, seams like rebar—the factory is reimagined as a construction site. Layered with a scripted dialogue between an AI companion and a man, the film explores the merging of emotional care and industrial production. It questions how intimacy, labor, and architecture intertwine in an age of AI. The work proposes a future where relationships are designed, manufactured, and optimized—blurring the lines between body, building, and machine.
Biography
Wo-Men Work is a critical spatial practice based in Hong Kong and co-founded by Chiara Oggioni and Sun Yi.
Yi and Chiara are architects, researchers, and lecturers at The University of Hong Kong.
Wo-Men Work aims to establish a critical spatial practice and challenge existing power structures by working on projects from an intersectional angle and across different scales. While working with a variety of architectural mediums, much of their work uses filmmaking to narrate intimate stories of overlooked spaces and put spatial production’s past and present narratives in conversation with their future.Their projects are funded and awarded by Design Trust, HKU Special Project Funding, Transfer Video Award, and The Global Feminist Pitch, among others, and have been exhibited at PMQ HKU Architecture Gallery (Hong Kong - 2022), MIT Keller Gallery (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - 2024), and Escola Da Cidade (São Paulo, Brazil - 2024).
Materials
Single-channel video with sound
Organisation
Wo-Men Work