Touch matters. It’s fundamental to how we experience and know ourselves, others and the world, and can be central to how we communicate. A new wave of sensory communication technologies is beginning to stretch the possibilities of how we ‘feel’ the world around us and how, what, whom and when we touch. The emerging landscape of ‘digital touch’ creates new ways of understanding and engaging with each other, of connecting or disconnecting, and the spaces in between. This raises questions for the place of touch in communication, including: What would it be like if we could hug or touch across distance? How might it shape our sense of connection? What bonds might be formed or lost? How could we establish trust, or protect our privacy and safety?

‘IN-TOUCH: Digital Touch Communication’ explores the social implications of digital touch technologies for communication. We aim to close the immense gap between technological development and social science understanding of digital touch. Through mapping this complex landscape and advancing theory and method in the social study of emerging touch technologies, we seek to:

  1. Anticipate and confront the social, political and ethical challenges raised by digital touch (such as, privacy, safety, and digital exclusion)
  2. Enhance our capacity to fully imagine and engage with the societal relevance and potential of digital touch for communication
  3. Enable the development of digital touch devices, systems and environments to take adequate account and care of people’s communicative practices and social contexts
  4. Inform the use and governance of digitally mediated touch

This website charts the progress of IN-TOUCH and provides insights into our current thinking, case studies, publications, and related research projects.

Unlocking Touch

This podcast episode is a little different from our usual interviews. Unlocking Touch uses imaginative sound design, emotionally gripping narrative, and powerful invitations to engage in simple physical practices, to tell the story of Mary’s journey through the COVID19 pandemic. The very rooms in which the listener lives become the setting for this compelling story…

by intouch

Seeing and Feeling: Touch and Visual Art

Guest post, by Julian Stair (@julianstair) ‘Unlike literary communication, an art does not carry a message: it is a message. If you still persist and ask the artist what that message is, he will be unable to satisfy you. If he could, it would not be necessary for the art to exist.’ Michael Cardew,  Pioneer…

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Haptics For All: Democratizing the Haptic Design Ecosystem

Guest post, by Hannah Elbaggari (@hmhrchl) Where would you go to learn about haptics? This blog? A mentor? The World Wide Web? Haptics (also referred to as ‘digital touch’) has grown from a sub-field of mechanical engineering in the 90s to encompass areas of robotics, human-computer interaction (HCI), the creative arts, and more. It has…

by intouch