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
Tag: Touch
Industrial Touch & Robotic Imaginations
In this episode, Lili Golmohammadi catches up with Dr Ned Barker to hear about his research into advanced robots in industrial settings. Every industrial revolution, or major technological advancement, transforms the role of touch in making things and the social and sensory experience of work. This has not simply been a story of production being taken out of the hands of workers by automated processes. Who touches what, why, and how, has been a longstanding feature of our sociological and political life – especially when it comes to the touching of dirty and dangerous materials. With all the current technological changes afoot, what types of touch do we want to see developing? And what alternatives might there be to the well-known utopian/dystopian cultural imaginations of robots and industrial touch? In this episode, we dive into some of these themes, which emerged through Ned’s time in a waste management centre, a glass bottle factory, and a leading robotics company, as well as through interviews with world-leading roboticists.
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
Relearning and reconfiguring touch in life-changing circumstances
In this episode, Lili Golmohammadi and Kerstin Leder Mackley speak to former teacher Caroline Coster about relearning and reconfiguring touch after quadruple amputations. We explore Caroline’s modified touch experiences, including issues of touch sensitivity and the use of digital and analogue tools for navigating everyday life.
Touching Lyrics
By Dimitri Chubinidze (@DChubini) with the InTouch team. At the start of spring, and after a long winter, the human sensorium enters a new cycle of perception. This ‘tuning’ of sensual experiences and its rhythmic orchestration are perfectly represented in music culture. In this blog post I pick up from our festive 2020 ‘Touched by… Continue reading Touching Lyrics
Lost in delivery. Touch, and fashion’s inconsistent communication to the visually impaired
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
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
Fashioning Digital Touch
New digital processes are changing how garments are designed and developed. From wearable electronics to motion capture, to crafting a pattern on a virtual mannequin, what does rapid digitisation in fashion education and industry mean for touch? Has the role of touch and tactile material engagement in the garment design development process been fully understood yet? How does one go about studying touch practices in the contemporary fashion studio? In this episode, Lili Golmohammadi speaks to UAL lecturer, researcher, and fellow IN-TOUCH PhD candidate Douglas Atkinson about how he came to frame his study, and the ethnographic approaches he employed to understand how fashion students and tutor-practitioners use touch. Now in the final stages of the PhD, Douglas reflects on how digital touch technologies might best support fashion designers’ touch practices in the future.
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
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
IN-TOUCH: DIGITAL TOUCH COMMUNICATION 