Connection guide
What you are about to tell each other
This document is meant to be with you during the experience. Print it, or keep it beside you. Keep your phone in the room, screen off: it is recording while you speak to each other, and there is nothing on it for you to watch.
The PDF is ready to print, or to keep on your phone. You can also print it directly.
Before
- Write separately. Show each other nothing until the reading.
- Use the questions that speak to you. Skip the rest. Add your own.
- There is no right length. Three sentences are enough if they are true.
- Do not write to sound good. Write to be exact.
The ten questions
They run from the easiest to the hardest. Nothing obliges you to follow the order, or to answer them all.
- 01
The moment
The first instant you knew. Not the official date, not the version you tell other people: the exact moment, the one you may never have said out loud.
- 02
An evening with no occasion
An ordinary evening with this person. Nothing to celebrate, nothing remarkable. Describe it, and say why it matters more than the big dates.
- 03
What they do without knowing
A gesture, a habit, the way they hold a cup. Something they do without noticing and that you watch every single time. Describe it.
- 04
What you changed
Name one thing that changed in you because of them. Not a compliment: a real change, one you would not have made alone.
- 05
The hardest part
The hardest thing you have been through together. What held? What nearly gave way?
- 06
What you forgave
Is there something you forgave without ever saying so? Say it now.
- 07
What you never said
Something you think often and have never put into words. Write it here, exactly as it comes.
- 08
Your fear
What are you afraid of, in this bond? Name it once, clearly. This is the hardest passage of the letter.
- 09
Ten years from now
Describe a scene, not a plan. Where are you, what can you hear, who speaks first?
- 10
The sentence
If only one sentence were to remain from everything you have written, which one? Put it at the end. Read it more slowly than the rest.
On the day
- 01
Put on your smart rings. Choose a place where no one will interrupt you.
- 02
Open the Arsentis app and press Start. From that instant, and only from that instant, the capture is running.
- 03
One of you reads their text out loud. The other listens, without replying.
- 04
Swap.
- 05
Hold each other, without speaking. For as long as you want.
- 06
Press Finish. That’s it.
How long
Expect around thirty minutes. Ten at the very least, so there is enough material. An hour at most.
What will show up in your artwork
Reading to someone and being held by them do not do the same thing to your body. The rhythm is different, the variation is different. That difference will be visible in your artwork: you will be able to point at the moment you took each other in your arms.