During their first semester BA Hons Textiles students at Uclan undertake a series of workshops designed to raise their sensory awareness.
The first exercise relates to touch. This workshop involves each participant in an investigation of an unseen, mystery object, while blindfolded. Working in pairs, the non blindfolded, ’sighted’ partner observes, and writes down the descriptive narrative spoken by the ‘touching’ partner, who is asked to memorise the experience as much as possible. (Before the ‘touching’, participants are encouraged to clap and rub hands together to heighten their sensitivity). At the next stage, the object is put away out of sight, the blindfold removed and each student then attempts to convey their touch experience onto paper, from memory, using black and white mark-making, and relevant descriptive words. The drawings and the objects are then compared, and discussed, and some findings proposed. The blindfolds and roles are then swapped over, and the exercise repeated using another mystery object.
In some instances the blindfolded students instantly recognised the name of the object they were feeling and later were able to draw it as an integrated form. Often however, details were mis represented- possibly because the student was making assumptions and was able to reference a presumed similar object from their visual memory.
Several students thought they had an idea about what colour the object might have, or gave it a stereotypical ‘right way up’ in their drawing, or in one case, a drawing appeared to relate to the ‘fit’ of the object when it was held in her hand. However, some objects totally mystified students and these stimulated hesitant drawings that were ‘punctuated’ with seperate patches of texture, like sensory maps. We concluded that this could have been because the entirety of the shape and also the name of the object had remained unknown throughout the touching.
Touch has been called ‘the mother of the senses’. It plays a fundamental role in perception and the way we make sense of an object or an environment, but because there are few words that can adequately describe it, we tend to fall back onto using the name of an object, or we convey the experience by comparing it to one from memory, as a metaphor. This lack of language can mean that tactile communication remains tacit and thus goes unacknowledged in many circumstances.
The inadequacy of language can ‘blind’ us to the full potential of our sensory engagement with the world. Its only when we don’t know the name of something that we have an opportunity to really ’see’ it for how, rather than only what, it is.
For more about perception:
Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees. Over thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin, by Lawrence Weschler.
Can you touch it?
For centuries, textiles have operated as a medium of communication, connecting peoples, their histories and value systems from all over the globe, through the wearing of cloth on our bodies, or by creating comfort and identity in the ‘dressing’ of our homes.
We want to contribute to the discussions at OPEN 09 from a textiles perspective and sensibility. We believe that insight into the emotional, social, cultural and cognitive value of textiles and craft, and especially the communicative potential of our sense of touch, will have much to bring to a creative, digital future. The blog format may not immediately seem sensitive to our topic, as the properties of touch are not easy to convey via an information medium that has grown out of text based communication. But because of this, as much as inspite of it, we want to collect tactile knowledge and accounts of textile experience in whatever form they can be relayed here, in the hope that this challenge will stimulate innovative and relevant approaches to developing themes for this conference. Are there any concerns that a digital future world will promote a disembodied, virtual reality that may radically alter our sense of being in touch? Can differing textile qualities be successfully communicated via digital imagery, or haptic technologies; or be translated into novel combinations of digital sound and movement data, for example? Will a better understanding of the powerful emotional affect of touch, encourage the textile and fashion industries to explore innovative methods, in response to the growing imperative for recycling and sustainability?
We’d particularly like to connect with people who design, make or sell products or artifacts, where creativity and the sensuality of materials are core values. This includes designers, artists, craftspeople and commercial manfacturers of textiles, and textile retailers on the high street or on the internet. But also furniture, jewellery, ceramics, product designers, who are using traditional, ancient, ‘analogue’ and/or digital processes. Games designers, interaction designers, digital sculptors; haptic researchers; textile historians and curators; Anthropologists, psychologists, phenomenologists, medics, and others who study the senses, materiality or new media. So, please get in touch!
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