Short Abstract:

Touch is re-emerging as an area of interest within techno-scientific communities and appears to hold a powerfully seductive grip on scientific and engineering imaginations. In this workshop, participants will explore fantasies of touch and subject them to some rigorous reality testing.

Long Abstract:

Touch is re-emerging as an area of interest for engineers, roboticists, data scientists, and neuroscientists. Often presented as a new frontier in multimodal communication, a vast untapped market of yet-to-be-imagined devices and applications, or as a gateway to reality itself, touch holds a powerfully seductive grip on scientific and engineering imaginations. Recent developments in digital sensory communication and mid-air “touchless” haptics have allowed engineers to dream of novel applications in contexts as diverse as virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, gaming, spirituality, and marketing. And yet, the realisation of touch applications has consistently remained just out of reach for those working in haptics and HCI.

In this workshop, participants will explore fantasies of touch and subject them to some rigorous reality testing. Participants will work with a range of materials including physical artefacts, excerpts from speculative fictions written by haptics engineers, marketing and promotional images, and extracts from ethnographic field notes to examine the desires and anxieties underpinning developments in the touch space. Are engineers about to “change the boundaries of reality” or are we witnessing yet another haptic dream that will fail to materialise?

For this workshop, we envisage a group of no more than 15-20 participants (we are happy to do either 1 or 2 sessions, depending on the interest and scheduling possibilities). We would require a space where participants are able to move around and cluster in small groups. Beyond a screen for powerpoint, we will bring any other materials we require with us.