Sensory

Seeing and Feeling: Touch and Visual Art

Guest post, by Julian Stair (@julianstair) 'Unlike literary communication, an art does not carry a message: it is a message. If you still persist and ask the artist what that message is, he will be unable to satisfy you. If he could, it would not be necessary for the art to exist.' Michael Cardew,  Pioneer… Continue reading Seeing and Feeling: Touch and Visual Art

Sensory

Haptics For All: Democratizing the Haptic Design Ecosystem

Guest post, by Hannah Elbaggari (@hmhrchl) Where would you go to learn about haptics? This blog? A mentor? The World Wide Web? Haptics (also referred to as ‘digital touch’) has grown from a sub-field of mechanical engineering in the 90s to encompass areas of robotics, human-computer interaction (HCI), the creative arts, and more. It has… Continue reading Haptics For All: Democratizing the Haptic Design Ecosystem

Sensory

The ‘Anatomy of ice’ explored through touch & sound  

The ‘Anatomy of ice’ explored through touch & sound   Guest post, by Hannah Rowan (@rowanhannah) The project Anatomy of Ice is part of my ongoing research into glass, ice and phases of matter. The transcript and video featured in this blog post come from a performance I developed in Svalbard in the Arctic Circle,… Continue reading The ‘Anatomy of ice’ explored through touch & sound  

Sensory

The Star-nosed Mole and Our Sense of Touch

Guest post, by Jackie Higgins (@JackieHiggins_) This extract has been adapted from Jackie Higgins's new book 'Sentient: What Animals Reveal about our Senses'. Out now in the UK with Picador and in the USA on 22 February 2022 with Atria.  Higgins considers the human senses through the ears, eyes, skins, noses, tongues and more of… Continue reading The Star-nosed Mole and Our Sense of Touch

Sensory

‘Touch Tools’ at IEEE World Haptics 2021

By Kerstin Leder Mackley (@kayle10) with InTouch (@IN_TOUCH_UCL) [Touch Tools Workshop Website] In July 2021, InTouch brought together an international panel of speakers from academia and industry for an interactive workshop at the IEEE World Haptics Conference 2021. ‘Touch Tools: Bringing Social-Sensorial Tools to Digital Touch Design’ explored the kinds of conceptual and design tools… Continue reading ‘Touch Tools’ at IEEE World Haptics 2021

Sensory

From the InTouch project to Living with Living Machines

Guest post, by Ned Barker (@nedbarker10 & @BiohybridB). Today on the 1st of October 2021, my focus switches from InTouch to a new project, ‘Biohybrid bodies: a sociological framework for living with Living Machines’, supported by the Leverhulme Trust and UCL’s Institute of Education. Besides introducing the project, this thinking piece charts some of the key the ideas encountered through the InTouch Robotic Touch case study that inspired its formation.

Sensory

Technologies of Touch: Rendering physical tactile sensations into virtual online shopping environments

Guest post, by Dr. Margot Racat, Professor of Marketing, IDRAC Business School (@Margot_bb, LinkedIn, Research Gate) Cosmetics are among the most sensory products around. Almost ten years ago when I was working at l’Oréal, the worldwide cosmetic group, they were about to launch their first virtual try-on make-over, and I began to realise that we… Continue reading Technologies of Touch: Rendering physical tactile sensations into virtual online shopping environments

Sensory

Fashioning the Voice – A singing trench coat that shows how clothes touch us in more ways than you think

Guest post, by Jennifer Anyan (@jenniferanyan) Fashioning the Voice is an interdisciplinary research project that brings together the expertise of Yvon Bonenfant, Dr. Tychonas Michailidis and myself, Jennifer Anyan. Yvon is an artist-academic and creative director at Tract + Touch, who extends voice across media to explore innovative ways of creating. Tychonas’s work focuses on… Continue reading Fashioning the Voice – A singing trench coat that shows how clothes touch us in more ways than you think

Sensory

What Anthropomorphic Design can do for Digital Touch

Guest post, by Marc Teyssier (@marcteyssier) https://youtu.be/OuEhqHvE1qU As a designer and researcher, I am constantly obsessed with how to shape the future of interfaces and technologies. Until recently, this was easy for me to imagine. Similar to many of us, my creativity for the future was fuelled with visions proposed by science-fiction books and movies… Continue reading What Anthropomorphic Design can do for Digital Touch