Guest post, by Michela Ornati (@michela.ornati) About a year into my new PhD program at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland, I began losing my eyesight. I have been myopic since adolescence, so not seeing well has always been the norm for me. But this was different. The decline was marked, and what was worse,… Continue reading Lost in delivery. Touch, and fashion’s inconsistent communication to the visually impaired
Category: Sensory
Researching Digital Touch During and After a Pandemic
Guest post, by Ned Barker (@nedbarker10) with the InTouch team. Methodological innovation is at the core of the InTouch project. Our engagement with digitally mediated touch builds on a ‘socially orientated’ stance to touch. Prior to the pandemic, our research activities involved observing, participating in, experimenting with, and disrupting touch through in-situ methods developed by… Continue reading Researching Digital Touch During and After a Pandemic
Touched by Music: a Christmas Playlist with a Tactile Spin
By In-Touch Music is a part of our everyday lives: many song lyrics both ‘touch’ us and tell stories of our tactile relationships with one another. The interdisciplinary InTouch Project at UCL explores the social implications of digital technology for touch communication. As a fun side-project the team has compiled a Touch Playlist – and… Continue reading Touched by Music: a Christmas Playlist with a Tactile Spin
Digital Touch: An Online Exhibition Curated by Carlos Pinto and Georgia Perkins
Guest post, by Georgia Perkins (@_GeorgiaPerkins) This guest ‘thinking piece’ illustrates the aim of the online exhibition Digital Touch, to surpass narrow notions and definitions of touch to highlight possibilities of different kinds of intimacy, care and contact which can be felt through the screen. With the demand for social distancing and self-isolation in response… Continue reading Digital Touch: An Online Exhibition Curated by Carlos Pinto and Georgia Perkins
What the eye can’t see: closer observation with touch and drawing in anatomy education
Guest post, by Leonard Shapiro B.Soc.Sc., B.A. Fine Art (Hons.), Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, South Africa. (www.lateralleap.co.za, Twitter: @leonard_shapiro, Instagram: @leonard_shapiro) In the post, Leonard Shapiro describes how he came to develop an observation method based on touch and drawing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJAioNbAis&t=2s Fig. 1: Anatomy observation exercise using touch and drawing in… Continue reading What the eye can’t see: closer observation with touch and drawing in anatomy education
NeoTouch: a speculative brain-computer-interface technology
Guest post, by Christine Wurth (www.christinewurth.com / @christinewurth) NeoTouch is a Speculative Design project envisioning the future of haptic technology. It takes the form of a communication device based on a brain-computer-interface which allows the wearer to experience touch at a distance. This post discusses the project’s design methods used to interrogate the ethical and… Continue reading NeoTouch: a speculative brain-computer-interface technology
Soft, Simple, Sens-ational: creating body-powered prostheses with feeling
Guest post, by Helge Wurdemann, Associate Professor of Robotics, UCL Mechanical Engineering [helge-wurdemann.com, softhaptics.website, @H_Wurdemann, YouTube] As a roboticist, one of my research interests covers the creation of interfaces that allow humans to interact with something or somebody through receiving tactile stimuli – these systems are called haptic feedback interfaces. One prominent example includes the… Continue reading Soft, Simple, Sens-ational: creating body-powered prostheses with feeling
Media tales of touch during Covid
By InTouch Over the life of the InTouch project (starting in 2016) we have kept our feelers out for when touch hits the news headlines. While each year touch has had always had some exposure in the news, headlines have been infrequent and usually promoted by a study or incidence, for example: How often you… Continue reading Media tales of touch during Covid
A visual and tactile graphic design experiment: ‘Touch Project’
Guest post, by Parinda Sakdanaraseth Figure 1: A tactile-visual re-imagining of ‘Wallpaper’ magazine. Image credit: Parinda Sakdanaraseth. I am fascinated by the sense of touch. With my background in Graphic Design, I feel a joy in using the little power I have to experiment and play with different kinds of paper to create rich textures… Continue reading A visual and tactile graphic design experiment: ‘Touch Project’
Sex, Robots and Touch
Dr Ned Barker, of In-Touch, interviews Dr Kate Devlin on the present and future of how sex robots might come to touch our bodies, lives, and society, and the social and ethical issues that arise. NB: In Turned On: Science Sex and Robots you described yourself as a “pro sex feminist with radical leanings”. How… Continue reading Sex, Robots and Touch
IN-TOUCH: DIGITAL TOUCH COMMUNICATION 