TOUCH Issue 8: Garments That Touch You
One of the difficulties in our society
is the degree of disconnect and
the degree of discomfort we
sometimes feel with human touch.
This results from a lack of education
and practice with physical touch.
Yet, we absolutely need human
contact in order to live well.
In some ways technology has
widened the disconnect we
already have with touch, in some
ways it uses the need for tactile
sensation for it’s own agenda, and
in other ways still it is being used to
provide human-like touch when it
would otherwise not be possible.
With more and more people
traveling for work for extended
periods, and with more people
experiencing heavy social anxiety
Hip and Haptic
related to touch, technology
could be the link that ironically
keeps us in touch with one another.
There are now a few companies,
and research teams like Dzmitry
Tsetserukou‘s team at the Toyohashi
University of Technology, who
are creating haptic garments to
transfer touch over the Internet.
Hugging garments and garments
that
tickle,
induce
emotions like fear and
anger are all under
“...there is some
development
in
an
preliminary evidence
attempt to help us
to suggest that haptic connect more physically
and emotionally when
garments can illicit
we are too far apart
at least some of
to make that contact
ourselves. Tsetserukou’s
the emotional and
intention for this work
behavioural effects of
is
to
help
create
human touch.”
an
immersive
and
emotional experience