Tactility and haptic learning

There is a long tradition to see museums and similar cultural displays as sites of knowing and selfeducation; and also as tools of political and ideological tuition, indoctrination indeed. The critical approach of new museology in the late 20th century launched a systematic revision of the social and epistemological role museums play in contemporary culture. New museology highly increased, or at least required, the self-reflexivity
of cultural displays, however, an increase in reflexivity does not involve, in a self-evident way, an increase of intensified experience, which became crucial to our contemporary life, especially in the perspective of
somaesthetics. Thus, more recent museological and curatorial approaches, oriented according to the corporeal turn in philosophy and social sciences,
emphasize the effects and consequences of the sensorial range in use within cultural displays. The historically developed and therefore questionable social consctructions, political status quos and epistemological presuppositions underlying museum displays are encoded
already at the level of the sensorial modalities. Hence, a new critique of the cultural displays and representations will consider the sensorial spectrum available and targeted.
The museum was once considered a church, later a school, then a stage. Today, in accordance with somaesthetics, cultural displays can be conceived as physical sites of intersubjectivity and models of human
environment relationship, in other words: social and ecological agoras. Mentalistic and educational tactics (like identity politics, national heritage issues, intercultural relations, etc.) are not passé at all, but the somatic dimensions of human existence need to be revealed through tactile tactics in the most important cultural institutions.

"Like it or not, the current student body is composed mainly of students from the Millennial Generation.  They are very different than previous generations in their relationship to higher education.  Therefore, we must seek to understand this generation because these students, and those who follow them, are changing the face of education.  We can study and utilize the traits of the Millennial Generation to improve education. We can integrate educational practices that harness these traits, while maintaining the core components of current architecture education: drawing, model building, public speaking, and graphic presentation.  The use of hands-on, haptic learning techniques in architecture education, such as design/build, has been around for some time, most notably in the Rural Studio at Auburn University.  This idea began in 1993 as the brainchild of D.K. Ruth and Samuel Mockbee, and has been emulated by many architecture programs ever since.  However, the connection between haptic learning and the interactive skills of the current generation has not been made.  This is an important consideration highlighting the relevance and potential value of design/build in architecture education.  Despite the agreement of the majority of faculty and administrators in architecture programs of the importance of design/build programs as an educational tool, design/build is not considered a necessary component of architecture education.  This is regardless of the fact that this type of learning is part of many architecture programs.  Also, not every architecture program will have the opportunity, or ability, to incorporate design/build into their curriculum, which is why using haptic techniques in lecture classes is so important.

Educators have known intuitively that the traditional lecture is no longer the best way to educate.  This is why we have seen not only the design/build approach enter the curriculum, but also growth in the use of haptic learning in lecture courses. Kevin Dong, P.E. and Thomas Leslie, AIA explored haptic learning in their article “Breaking Stuff: A No-Frills Approach to Haptic Learning in Structures Classes." Dong and Leslie acknowledge a growing awareness in the academic community of the importance of using haptic learning techniques, yet their implementation of such techniques was not in response to these developments.  Their “common sense” guided them to employ more hands-on learning methods because they understood, intuitively, that millennial students require more interactive teaching strategies in order to grasp technical concepts. The relationship of real-world issues to structural principles, iterative development of structural designs, and the exploration of materials to test the ideas in a haptic setting are all based on the authors’ ideas of common sense in architecture education.  The lecture is not completely abandoned in this model, but seen as one of many important components to learning.  Therefore, the lecture moves from passive memorization to a more active role in the process of learning.  This process allows the authors to reiterate important concepts in various contexts to enhance the connection between the “aural, visual, and haptic.” "

In this article the problem of perception is highlighted from a philosophical, physiological and psychological point of view. The essay (second update) is followed by a list of publications, journals and websites about perception. The author would be delighted to receive comments. He can be contacted at j[underscore]kuijper[at]online[dot]nl.

Resumen
Desde hace un tiempo las interacciones con interfaces táctiles y la propagación de las tecnologías hápticas han dejado de formar un horizonte de futuro para ser parte del hojaldrado presente. De hecho, distintos autores se han dedicado al análisis de la comunicación táctil y al estudio de los medios hápticos. Sin embargo, estas investigaciones han aparecido de forma aislada y sin vinculación aparente. Nuestras notas intentarán sistematizar y estructurar el campo naciente de la mediación táctil. Así, en primer lugar, nos detendremos en perspectivas sociosemióticas y en distinciones que vienen del diseño de interfaces y de la ergonomía (I). Luego abordaremos tendencias arqueológicas sobre las máquinas de tocar que descubren su profundidad histórica (II) y, finalmente, volveremos a la inquietante pregunta sobre el carácter político y normativo de las tecnologías hápticas de los medios (III)

Abstract
Interactions with tactile interfaces and the propagation of
haptic technologies have ceased to form a future horizon to
be part of the present. In fact, numerous authors have devoted themselves to the analysis of tactile communication
and haptic media studies. However, these researches have
appeared in isolation and without evident linkage. Our notes
will systematize and structure the emergent field of tactile
mediation. Firstly, this paper will focus on socio-semiotic
perspectives and researches that come from interface design and ergonomics (I). Then it will discuss archaeological
tendencies on touch machines and their historical depth (II).
Finally, attention is turned to the disturbing question about
the political and normative nature of haptic technologies (III).

DeScriberS:
touch communication, haptic media, tangible interfaces,
archaeology of touch machines, touch mediations




Cómo citar
Rossi, L. (2020). Notas sobre la comunicación táctil y el estudio de los medios hápticos. La Trama De La Comunicación, 24(2), 033-051. Recuperado a partir de https://latrama.fcpolit.unr.edu.ar/index.php/trama/article/view/743

https://latrama.fcpolit.unr.edu.ar/index.php/trama/article/view/743

From a triple perspective including travel writing studies, disability studies and gender studies, this essay addresses a corpus of works and letters by deafblind activist and political writer Helen Keller (1880-1968)-exploring both published material and documents from the digital Helen Keller Archive. Rather than use a non-intersectional "Blind Lives Matter" approach avant la lettre, it draws on how a new, tactile phenomenology "imports", how it is imported into Keller's writings-on-the-go, especially in the travelogue Helen Keller's Journal 1936-1937.An experimental, collective sensorium emerges from Keller's strange prose, its passion for speed and machinic rhythms contrasting with its more lyrical moments. As a socialist, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a wobbly, and as the first deafblind woman to graduate from Radcliffe college, she was not only an exceptional individual; she had to critically adjust to the values of American "exceptionalism", and claimed her interest for "mattersthat-are-not-me". Her countless voyages, business trips and journeys in the company of other women-her helpers-were the occasion for novel orientations in space as well as in gender. Looking "back" at her writings involves blindly groping into the future of queer studies.

The chapter follows the thread of design education and tactile pedagogies, focusing on a significant shift in the 1950s and 1960s by which the senses started to be treated as commodities, technologies, and infrastructures. These new models of sense turned sensual operations and feelings into data that had to be brought into information flows and produce feedback loops to improve teaching and research; it also made classrooms into research laboratories and workshops where new ways of being in the world and languages to talk about experience were configured. Throughout the chapter, my argument is that design education contributed in significant ways to define a new sensorium that was to be central to educational research and to social and psychological sciences, in which tactile and visual experiences were translated as information records and as data processing. 
I first present some ideas about tactility as a pedagogical strategy in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in the Bauhaus school. In the second section, I introduce the shifts that the “Americanization” of tactilism in the 1940s and 1950s. In the third section, I discuss both Konrad Wachsmann’s algorithmic pedagogy and Bruno Munari’s tactile workshops in the 1950s-1970s. Both experiences, despite their differences, shared some assumptions about knowledge and the self that were related to the new sensorium  and new kind of governmentality. In the concluding remarks, I reflect on what the history of design education as a seemingly marginal field might say about educational research and its silences and blind spots.

What is the relationship between the ‘haptic’ and the ‘tactile’ when it comes to media? We might question whether there is such a thing as ‘haptic media’; in other words, is there a type of media that invite the attention of one modality rather than another, or that foster certain types of interaction over others? If we were to speak about ‘haptic media’, to what extent does it engage directly (only) with touch, and to what extent does it involve some form of enhancement of another modality? In what ways can haptic media appeal beyond the visuocentric norm of the screen, and therefore to non-normate or disabled users? Further, to what extent does the haptic in particular benefit from ‘sensory substitution’, which is most usually of touch for vision in assisted living technologies for the blind, or of sound for touch for the deaf, for example? Certain historical instances of sensory substitution systems are discussed below, including Norbert Wiener’s ‘hearing glove’ and Bach-Y-Rita’s...

Am Fachdidaktikzentrum Digital Lehren und Lernen der PH Burgenland wird intensiv an der Entwicklung und schulischen Implementierung von Konzepten zur Vermittlung von CT im Besonderen und digitaler Kompetenz im Allgemeinen geforscht. In diesem Zuge wurde beim Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung (BMBWF) das „Vorprojekt zum Projekt Denken lernen – Probleme lösen mit der Logobox” beantragt und nach Bewilligung seitens des BMBWF auch durchgeführt. Die Logobox wurde für den Einsatz in der Primarstufe unabhängig vom hier beschriebenen Projekt entwickelt. Angepasst an den kognitiven Entwicklungsstand sollen mit Hilfe der Logobox durch spielerisches Lernen im sozialen Kontext kognitive Grundfähigkeiten und digitale Kompetenz angebahnt, gefördert und entwickelt werden.

Cosa ci fanno insieme le traduzioni in quadro tattile dei dipinti di Raffaello Sanzio, Antonio Allegri detto Correggio e di Michelangelo Merisi detto Caravaggio? Si sono chiesti i visitatori della mostra  “Raffaello, Correggio, Caravaggio: un’esperienza tattile. Sulle orme di Scannelli” , allestita dal 18 novembre al 19 dicembre 2016 nel palazzo Rospigliosi di Zagarolo. La spiegazione va ricercata nel "Microcosmo della pittura", edito nel 1657, che racconta il viaggio di Francesco Scannelli, medico appassionato d’arte, alla scoperta dei capolavori del nostro Paese. Un testo ritenuto di fondamentale importanza per ripercorrere la storia della pittura italiana dal XVI al XVII secolo e che le opere in mostra, attraverso uno specifico impianto narrativo e contenuti di approfondimento aggiuntivi, hanno saputo restituire.
Vengono qui ripercorse le tappe di progettazione della mostra di Zagarolo, a partire dal lavoro di ricerca storico-critica sino alla creazione delle tavole tattili, poi riproposta presso il Palazzo Poli di Roma nel 2019 quando i quadri sono stati posti in dialogo con le incisioni raffiguranti gli stessi originali pittorici.

Los teléfonos celulares -particularmente los smartphones- se han convertido en los últimos años en el principal acceso a la información y en el dispositivo elegido para desempeñar multiplicidad de tareas en la vida cotidiana, especialmente en el segmento de los adolescentes y los jóvenes.

En este sentido, el objetivo de este artículo es presentar, de manera preliminar, una serie de consideraciones teórico-metodológicas que se están llevando adelante en la investigación “La influencia de la tactilidad en el uso de los dispositivos móviles por parte de jóvenes universitarios” que se desarrolla en el marco del Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Educación y de la Comunicación Social de la Universidad del Salvador (Buenos Aires, Argentina).

In this paper we investigate the influence of the location of vibrotactile stimulation in triggering the response made using two handheld joysticks. In particular, we compare performance with stimuli delivered either using tactors placed on the palm or on the back of the hand and with attractive (move toward the vibration) or repulsive prompts (move away from the vibration). The experimental setup comprised two joysticks and two gloves, each equipped with four pager motors along the cardinal directions. In different blocks, fifty-three volunteers were asked to move the joysticks as fast as possible either towards or away with respect to the direction specified by a set of vibrating motors. Results indicate that participants performed better with attractive prompts (i.e. responses were faster and with fewer errors in conditions where participants were asked to move the joysticks in the direction of the felt vibration) and that the stimulation delivered on the back of the hand from the gloves gives better results than the stimulation on the palm delivered by the joysticks.

What is the relationship between the ‘haptic’ and the ‘tactile’ when it comes to media? We might question whether there is such a thing as ‘haptic media’; in other words, is there a type of media that invite the attention of one modality rather than another, or that foster certain types of interaction over others? If we were to speak about ‘haptic media’, to what extent does it engage directly (only) with touch, and to what extent does it involve some form of enhancement of another modality? In what ways can haptic media appeal beyond the visuocentric norm of the screen, and therefore to non- normate or disabled users? Further, to what extent does the haptic in particular benefit from ‘sensory substitution’, which is most usually of touch for vision in assisted living technologies for the blind, or of sound for touch for the deaf, for example? Certain historical instances of sensory substitution systems are discussed below, including Norbert Wiener’s ‘hearing glove’ and Bach-Y-Rita’s tactile–visual sensory substitution (TVSS) system, to make a larger argument about the role of haptic technologies, and haptic media, for more inclusive digital interactions.