Nano design through haptic and aestethic laboratory experiments.
Our topic concerns how to conduct practice-based research between and within three aesthetic disciplines: sculptor, professional taster, and performative artist. We continue to work with the material and experiences developed during the 3-year VR-funded HAPTICA research project. Our plan is to actualise a few practical situations that show how we gained both a deeper aesthetic knowledge within our own artistic disciplines and grew more sensitive and knowledgeable about the challenges faced in the other disciplines. The overall topic has been to expand the field of aesthetics by including the proximity senses: tactile, haptic, smell, taste, and movement by conducting artistic research in haptic.
New design methods for educating designers are needed to adapt the attributes of haptic interaction to fit the embodied experience of the users. This paper presents educationally framed aesthetic sensitizing labs: 1) a material-lab exploring the tactile and haptic structures of materials, 2) a vibrotactile-lab exploring actuators directly on the body and 3) a combined materials- and vibrotactile-lab embedded in materials. These labs were integrated in a design course that supports a non-linear design process for embodied explorative and experimental activities that feed into an emerging gestalt. A co-design process was developed in collaboration with researchers and users who developed positioning and communications systems for people with deafblindness. Conclusion: the labs helped to discern attributes of haptic interactions which supported designing scenarios and prototypes showing novel ways to understand and shape haptic interaction.
Professors Cheryl Akner-Kohler and Lena Tibell of the Nanoform project describe the artistic methods and benefits that it might afford to both science and society.
In 2010, the project MER was funded be The Knowledge (KK) foundation. Lars Eriksson, associate professor in applied aestetics and creative events at Grythytte Academy Örebro University, initiated the project MER which focuses on the way people move and interact in the environment around the meal.
This project has conducted a number of studies about the meeting between utensils, food and the guest in motion, creating the culinary experience. The poster presents a summary of a provocative method applied in all of the different studies.
Morse code has been used as a communications system at a distance to transmit text through tone or light pulses. This comparative study aims to test and evaluate the vibrotactile identification of Morse coded signals communicating instructions for movement. The pulses were presented on abdomen and wrist among 14 males (40-85 yr) experienced in acoustic Morse code and the rate of pulses was 12 words per minute using a Vibration Motor mounted in a plastic holder. There identification results were statistically significantly better on wrist compared to abdomen. Words were identified significantly better on the wrist as compared to abdomen but the identification results of the letters were equally good in both placements. There was a negative correlation between age and the pooled identification results tested on wrist PCC r=-0.45 (p<0.02). The participants rank ordered the wrist, over the abdomen, as the best place for positioning the vibrator. The results support haptic/tactile interaction research in positioning and communication system. Our future plans are to apply the results to the project "Ready Ride" for instructions for horseback riding for people with deafblindness as well as activity and movement for elderly people with impaired vision and hearing.