----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Sorry just to be popping in occasionally... but this was just so interesting
and wanted to ask a question.
Ashley, the metaphors of touch used by your respondents, or of some kind of
haptic experience with screen technologies are, I think, extremely telling, but
I'm wondering if it is that designers or the individuals building these
technologies are indeed leveraging the sense of touch that is so fundamental to
all of our interactions - so that we aspire to create systems we can touch or
at least can use the metaphor of touch to connect with or alter the
objects/systems/outcomes. So that it is not a coincidence that the metaphor of
touch is employed. Not to take this into the realm of science fiction, but if
we relied on other senses entirely what would these systems or objects appear
like? This is articulated, I think by Rollin in your question to him about the
materiality of pixels - the building blocks are what we need to use in order to
make these processes intelligible to us, within the framework of our existing
sense-capabilities (haptic, optical, affectual) etc. And further - perhaps we
can take "material" as a historically located term - not an description of
things as such. So that now, in this moment, it can include not only the act,
but the metaphor of touching, feeling, sensing.
Don't know if I am off on a tangent, but I'd be curious to hear what you think -
H
On Oct 17, 2014, at 11:59 PM, Ashley Scarlett <ashley.scarl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> In a series of interviews that I recently conducted as part of my doctoral
> research, several of the respondents drew upon touch, and metaphors of touch,
> as a means of talking about the materiality and perceived immateriality of
> the digital. Through the proliferation of haptic devices, rising popularity
> of 3D printers, and increasing awareness of our “cyborgian” status, touching
> “the digital” seems eminently possible. To this end, I would like to ask the
> group, what role does “touch” play in attributing materiality to the
> digital? How might touch be leveraged as a means of locating the whereabouts
> of this material?
>
>
>
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