Technologies of Touch

Touch technologies seem omnipresent in contemporary culture, with the proliferation of mobile telephones and their touchscreen interfaces. However, the nature of this interaction remains poor as it takes place on a Cartesian plane and only allows access to screen-based media. In this project, we will study the corporeal, interpersonal dimensions of touch that take place in musical performance. To do so, we will: 1) Look at the histories, cultures, and ethics of touch; 2) Develop body technologies using physiological sensing; and 3) Create garments using electronic textiles to facilitate interpersonal touch in live performance situations. The current fascination with artificial intelligence is leading to new forms of disembodiment and alienation. We no longer write with a pen, but instead prompt ChatGPT to write something for us. This has flowed over to the visual arts, where embodied acts of painting have been supplanted by textual description as instructions to a generative algorithm. The high dimensional information arising from the human body can create a richer interaction with AI. We propose that technologies of touch, implemented in body sensors and conductive thread, become a rich new source of "small data" that remain personal and private. We will train algorithms to enable wearable systems to become expressive instruments, sensitive to our individual gestures and body language. By testing these instruments with musicians in real contexts of concert performance, we will investigate the expressive, communicative, and intersubjective potential of touch technologies. Touch in everyday social interaction is contingent on cultural contexts and shyness of people. Meanwhile musicians are accustomed to working with their bodies and their instruments. The instrumental quality of the systems we build will be a natural extension for such creative practitioners. By starting with music, we intend that the knowledge gained in the research will have broader societal and cultural impact by gleaning a deeper understanding of the sociality of touch. We will then be able to imagine potential new dynamics for social touch that are ethical, sensitive, and respectful, addressing postcolonial, classist, and ableist critique. We will study different accounts of touch: disembodied, intelligent, aware, expressive, caring and diverse. We bring to bear state-of-the-art technologies of embodied human-computer interaction to facilitate a series of artistic experiments in music performance that ask how we make sense of and act through touch. We will pay particular attention to affordances when interacting with systems enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We plan an interdisciplinary, mixed methods research programme combining musicology, performance studies, critical technology and craft making practices. This innovative, creative, 'enactivist' plan is built upon three overarching methodologies: (1) Studying touch in and through music performance across a theory-practice nexus; (2) Working with performers as users; and (3) Cyclical iteration. The project establishes a new UK-German research consortium of leaders in their respective fields and creates the opportunity for them to converge for the first time on a common research goal. Whilst firmly grounded in musicology and theoretical analysis, we reflect recent developments in the 'performative turn' in musicology to consider the importance of touch. This is accompanied by critical instrument building that will create situations and provide interactions for the empirical study of embodied musical ensemble communication.