Exhibited in the 2016 Noel Chettle Memorial Art Prize - BDES1026 First Year Architecture Studio 1A
'TACTILIY'
2016
bamboo, metal, leather
The sense of touch enables the body to understand and explore the tactile and spatial nature of a site. Through this sensory awareness an apparatus was developed exploring this close relationship between body and site. Prosthetics, robotics, as well as the works of Rebecca Horn and Jennifer Crupi who have explored how our hands interact with space, inspired the initial concept and form of the apparatus. By exploring the philosophy of perception, through the concept of ‘sense data’. Ideas of the uncanny and the doppelgänger by Sigmund Freud along with Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of Simulacra and Simulation also further developed the relationship between the apparatus, hand and the site.
'TACTILITY' augments the users perception of the site via changing how the body comes into contact and understands texture. The skeletal construction of the hand apparatus creates an extension that allows the user to attain an augmented sense of touch. It acts as another hand, preventing direct contact, only able to experience the sense through the apparatus. Springs allow the artificial ‘fingers’ to flex over the surfaces texture, acting as a receptor. These vibrations are transferred down to the spiked ends that touch every finger and thus prick the user. Also as the fingers brush against a surface the user is able to analyse the audio produced. As a result, sense data is attained through an indirect perception of the sites tactile nature, creating a different experience within the site and thus a different means of mapping.
