Overview

Human Geography is an increasingly interdisciplinary philosophicallyinformed social science. Current human geography covers a wide range of approaches including purely theoretical work, theoretically-informed empirical work, using a mixture of methodologies. My specialisation is the history and philosophy of the relationship between touch and space. This has led me to think about the role of touch in human-computer interaction (HCI). These research interests are not strictly ‘geography’ of course. But I have also pursued the implications of thinking about touch and the senses for ethnographic fieldwork, especially the difficulties of articulating complex combinations of bodily sensory and affective experience through text, which is more geography-related.

Issues and Interests

From an early stage in reading the Call for Proposals for this Research Cluster I knew there was a connection between three-dimensional computer modelling through haptics (the technologies of touch), and the preservation of particular materials. Although not a programmer, my research has looked at the experience of virtual touching through haptic interfaces, or the ‘added value’ in human-computer interactions through the addition of touch information alongside visual and audio modalities. From my Ph.D research on touch and space onwards, the effects of interaction through virtual touch have been significant in terms of the felt qualities, the actual experience, and what is deemed to be convincing in terms of the manufacturing or engineering of touch. The most famous haptic interface with a convincing fidelity of touch information is the PHANToM (Personal HAptic iNTerface Mechanism, right) which is being used in a number of projects.

Another aspect to this is touch at a distance, networking two PHANToMs across the Atlantic (see Paterson 2006b). The experience of interacting with this device is interesting phenomenologically, as it provides a realistic enough illusion of manipulating a three-dimensional object, especially when we collocate the tactually-experienced model with a visual representation on screen. Simultaneously, mapping the visual and the tactile gives a real sense of interacting with a material object. Furthermore, the properties of texture and hardness of the simulated materials are very variable, and these properties may be adjusted on the fly, in real time. This adjustment of virtual material properties has been exploited in design (see Paterson 2005; 2008). So the modelling of ‘virtual clay’ for example allows much more naturalistic shapes and organic forms in digital design, whereas previous ways of modelling and designing in computer-aided design (CAD) are less intuitive, involving using a mouse and keyboard, and interpreting the 2D space of the computer screen as a 3D space. Because the PHANToM allows free movement within a 3D virtual space of the desktop, interactions are more fluid and intuitive. And the properties of the virtual material can be made more malleable in the initial design stage, say, and then more solid for fine-tuning. The relevance to the Cluster is the possibility of easily producing a set of virtual textiles with their own individual textures and hanging/draping properties. Engineering the right ‘feel’ of a virtual textile is therefore possible with this device and others, and there is an interesting evaluative set of questions as to how this is judged and then recorded.

I now outline ways of envisaging haptic technology in the project: > Using haptic devices to produce the right ‘feel’ of a virtual textile means that, after experimentation and ‘touch and trial’, a small file can be produced that is a dataset for each particular virtual material, with all its characteristics of texture, weave and draping behaviour. These files can be loaded whenever a particular material needs to be modelled, and from these basic samples it is then easy to model larger garments through ‘texture mapping’ onto 3D computer models. Although not necessarily ‘authentic’, through trial and tweaking it is possible to get a convincing enough tactile representation of a sample of material. > This begs the question as to whether there is a more rigorously ‘scientific’ way of sampling actual textile samples in order to generate these files that can then be modelled using haptic interfaces. If, through 3D laser scanning, the relative size and stiffness of each strand and the topology of the weave can be determined, is the resulting data file potentially useful in producing a more authentic model of a virtual textile that can then be modelled by a haptic interface? Are there a set of adjustments to this data that can be routinely applied in order to produce a convincing enough tactile experience of the textile model? If it can be routinised, is there a way that the data can be input into the PHANToM API (application programming interface, the level of software that communicates with the haptic hardware) so that subsequent tweaks and adjustments can smooth out the experience? > The PHANToM interface is now fairly standard and fairly cheap. Another possibility therefore is the possibility to have virtual museum displays or tours that provide more access to prehistoric textiles to a variety of different people. Rather than producing a proprietary haptic interface there is an argument for modifying the existing PHANToM on the basis of costs, accessibility, robustness and because there is an already existing API that is open source and therefore tweakable. > How much of the material will be modelled, and how much of its context can also be represented or portrayed? By modelling a few inches square of a prehistoric textile, the technical accomplishment will not necessarily be appreciated by a lay audience. So how much virtual textile will be modelled, would this be an entire garment? In which case there are issues around modelling the draping and folding properties and involve further data for each file. A larger sample of material can then be virtually ‘hung’ from a pole or post and interacted with. Scaling this up, would it be beneficial to think of virtual dioramas within which the textile is displayed in interactive context? A ‘mixed reality’ display of a setting whereby one can touch the textile being weaved or worn? > Finally, knowledge transfer. By expanding the repertoire of virtual materials that can be modelled, along with museums and inclusivity there are potential commercial spin-offs. Firstly, refining the process of 3D scanning and modelling and routinising through the API might well be a valuable IP in itself. Secondly, previously unexploited materials and textiles can be experimented with virtually, modelled in new garments, and virtual prototyping for the fashion industry could be another application.

Further reading

Paterson, M. ‘Seeing with the hands, touching with the eyes: Vision, touch and the Enlightenment spatial imaginary’, The Senses and Society 1(2), 2006a, pp 224-242
Paterson, M. ‘Feel the Presence: The Technologies of Touch’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(5), 2006b, pp 691-708
Paterson, M. ‘Digital Touch’ in Constance Classen (Ed.), The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg, 2005, pp 431-436.
Paterson, M. ‘Digital Craft, Digital Touch: Haptics and Design’. In: Byron Hawk,
David Rieder, Ollie Oviedo (Eds.) Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008 pp. 233-244.

Links

www.sensesoftouch.co.uk - my personal research website
http://touchtech.wikispaces.com – temporary project website and repository of
information about touch technologies
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1376_touch_me/index.html - ‘Touch Me’
exhibition at V&A
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11179-haptic-glove-to-touch-on-virtualfabrics. html - New Scientist article that quotes both Ian Summers and myself