Arts Thread

Tactile literacy declines as we interface with the world through digital screens. Because of this, our ability to appreciate our surroundings, connect to each other, and understand ourselves is impacted. Though they dull our sense of materiality, screens also behave like fabric. They respond to our fingertips through a pinch or swipe, rippling and unfolding to mirror textile behavior. With our contemporary notion of materiality blurred between physical and digital, I propose the adoption of haptic visuality—a tactile way of seeing—to build greater awareness of our sense of touch in digital spaces. I respond to materials through a cycle of physical and digital processes. Manipulating, capturing, and rendering are tools to distort materiality between virtual and non-virtual worlds. Surface manipulation techniques such as smocking, tucking, and pleating echo the screen manipulation techniques of pinching, swiping, and tapping, sculpting the fabric’s surface into navigable architecture. These small, cumulative gestures forge passageways to new worlds and sensory experiences. How can a fabric’s surface offer the real dimension and deep transformation of a digital screen? By interpreting these intimate digital worlds into physical space, I hope to put people in visceral contact with their fading sense of touch, inciting an urgency to reconnect to materials, environments, and oneself.