Finding a soulmate, the touchy-feely way
Project that blends courtship, science and performance art helps singles find their sensory match
You’ve touched15 strangers’ warm palms, smelled their clothing and listened to their floating voices. And now you peel off your blindfold and stare silently into 15 sets of eyes. Welcome to speed dating, sensory style. This weekend, Torontonians will have their first shot at sensory-propelled love with Speed-dating for the Senses, a project by Montreal-based Scientists for Love, in town for the SummerWorks performance festival.
Called “part speed dating, part performance art, part science” by its creators, the event includes five different experiments involving sound, touch, taste, scent and sight, all designed to knock participants out of the dating doldrums.
“People meet each other kind of back- wards from what a normal context would be,” said Amy Chartrand, one half of the Scientists for Love duo, a group dedicated to studying love in all its forms.
“Normally you see someone first, maybe from across the room, and then you approach them.”
“It’s always sight you’re working with first but in this case . . . sight only counts for one vote of five.”
Chartrand said initially, the Speeddating for the Senses project and Scientists for Love started off as a bit of a joke — neither of the business partners are trained scientists, with Chartrand’s background in English literature and partner Leigh Kotsilidis working as a managing editor of a literary magazine — but after brainstorming over a beer, their plans took off. The team has pulled off four speed-dating events in Montreal.
The intention behind the speeddating experiment is for participants to explore the role that senses play in compatibility, she said, but ultimately, it’s to offer singles an imaginative springboard for romantic connection, by whatever means sparks it.
At the Toronto events — a Friday night one for straight singles and a Sunday one for the LGBTQ community — 30 singles will arrive at a “top- secret location” in west-end Toronto. At the Friday event, men will be carted into one room and women shuffled off into another. They’ll then be blindfolded and brought into the same room.
In the first experiment, participants will recite the alphabet to each other, raising their hands if they like the sound of their partner’s voice.
In the second, the men will stand in a circle surrounded by a larger circle of women — still blindfolded — and spend 30 seconds touching each others’ hands. Chartrand describes this exercise as a delicate “dance” that involves expressing yourself while also “listening” to the cues your partner gives you. Then the men and women will be taken into separate rooms where the blindfolds come off and the “taste” experiment begins. While imaginations might stray too far, this experiment is tame. It involves sampling a buffet of comfort foods that the other sex has brought in. In the past, items have included everything from strawberries and chocolate to prunes and quinoa vegetable porridge, said Chartrand.
Next up is the scent test. Participants open up a zip-lock bag that contains a T-shirt carrying the scent of its owner. The shirt should smell the same way it would as if someone was leaning in to hug you, said Chartrand.
Finally, participants are led back into a room and are instructed to stand two feet apart from one another as they get the first glimpse of their prospective partner. They’re told to gaze into each others’ eyes for a full15 seconds.
“There’s a lot of joy in the room at that moment … It’s kind of beautiful,” said Chartrand, acknowledging the experience can also be “really awkward and strange” for the first few seconds.
Finally, the experiments are over and the participants are dismissed — sent off to a bar for one hour to await the results of their speed-dating marathon, soon to be unveiled in chart form.
For some participants, the sensory experiment results matter a great deal, said Chartrand, but for others, they’re more concerned with meeting the other participants afterwards and seeing if real-world sparks fly.
But even if singles don’t find love, Chartrand hopes the event will open dating horizons for participants. “At a certain point we all become stuck in patterns that we might like to break,” she says. “This might give you an opportunity to talk to someone in a potentially romantic context that you might not have chosen before.”
To register, email scientistsforlove@gmail.com. Cost is $20.