Abstract
In this chapter, we make a case for the significance of touch for communication and suggest that developments in sensory digital technologies are bringing touch to the fore in ways that move digital communication beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to include new ‘ways of feeling’. We argue that this shift requires us to take new measure of digitally mediated touch, or ‘digital touch’, as a communicational resource, what it is and can be, how it is designed and imagined, and its communicative potentials and limitations. We situate digital touch communication in relation to a technological awakening to a broader social revaluing of people’s sensorial experience. We introduce and reflect on the socially orientated stance to digital touch we take in this book, and the InTouch project more generally. The chapter provides an overview of the book which also serves to introduce the key themes that it explores, that is the research and technological terrain of digital touch, social norms of touch, presence and connection, sociotechnical imaginaries of digital touch, and the ethics of touch. Finally, we introduce six InTouch case studies which examine digital touch across different contexts, perspectives and participants. We draw illustrative examples from these (alongside extensive engagement with the research literature) in order to enliven and consolidate the book’s exploration of the sociality of digital touch communication across different contexts.
Highlights
Digital Touch Communication AbstractIn this chapter, we make a case for the significance of touch for communication and suggest that developments in sensory digital technologies are bringing touch to the fore in ways that move digital communication beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to include new ‘ways of feeling’
We investigate the aspects of digital touch that are central to a range of communicational situations; explore how people improvise around digital touch; review the skills, experiences and communicative repertoires that they draw on/or speculate they will use for digital touch to communicate; and explore how they experience and imagine connection/connectivity, social relations and emotions, being experienced or communicated through digital touch
We attend to four topics: Social Norms, Connection and Presence, the Sociotechnical Imaginary and Ethics. While these are not the only topics that matter to understanding digital touch, they have repeatedly been to the fore across our case studies, the research literature, and conversations with others working within digital touch
Summary
Digital Touch Communication when visitors held hands. The pair of gloves map the walks of those holding hands, recording GPS and pressure, flex and galvanic skin response. This digital data from the gloves is transformed, using an Arduino plotter, into graphical drawings that can be kept and shared by users as a memory provocation. ‘Motion Prints’ was a piece designed for Dementia Care Homes, to encourage physical interaction through therapeutic putty. A MYO arm-bracelet senses muscle movements while the users manipulate the putty, and this activity data is converted into a digital visualisation displayed on the table top. The ‘Water Synthesizer’, involved the tactile sensation of moving water dynamically to create sounds related to the water movement. The online exhibition catalogue (Invisible Flock 2018) provides further context and information on these artefacts and the case study more generally
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