Touching on the computer?

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Playing Toucher by Serge Bourchardon, Kevin Carpentier, and Stephanie Spenle, brought up a point that I hadn’t realized previous to playing it. When reading electronic literature, as opposed to reading physical literature, one part of the experience that is missing is the ability to physically touch what is being read. By playing this game, I was able to experience different sensations of touch. Toucher allowed a work of electronic literature to be multisensory. Previous to playing this game, I had not even noticed that the aspect of touch was missing from accessing works of literature on the computer.

When playing the game, there are six sensations that Toucher allows you to experience; brush, blow, spread, hit, caress and move. The first sensation that I experienced was “Hit”. When discovering this, there is a game that must be played. In this game, there is a fly that flies over a piece of paper, covered in glass. In order to win, you must hit the fly by trying to click it with your mouse. It was very interactive and added a lot to the game because every time I attempted to kill the fly and missed, there would be a loud cracking noise and it would appear that glass was broken at the exact place that I clicked. In my opinion, the most interesting section of Toucher was “caress”. When discovering this sensation, I had to spray paint on a canvas. This canvas would only let me paint in certain areas. As I kept trying to paint, it would eventually fill in the area of the silhouette of a woman. Each time a stroke of painting was done, the woman would make a sexual sound. It was interesting how many different aspects sensation this game was able to bring out.

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Controlling a hand by a mouse, microphone, or a webcame.

March 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For my fourth checkpoint I tried many different games and looked at multiple digital poems until I finally found one that I liked, Toucher. Toucher “refers to physical act of touching and reflects upon the possibilities of developing haptic sensation in a digital environment.” Like another student in our class said a person controls this game by a “mouse, a microphone, or a webcam.” The picture below is what shows up when you click Serge Bourchardon, Kevin Carpentier, and Stephanie Spenle’s masterpiece. If you look closely enough all the words are in French. This game can be played in English or in French.

When you scroll over the thumb a window pops up and says, “MOVE. Touch the words, replace them and move them. The first words that are on the screen say “Do you touch me when I touch you?” Next you can move the words to come up with other sayings. All the words deal with attraction and love. The saying changes to who has the feelings depending which way you move your mouse over the words. Just by simple movements the person playing this game is able to take control of the feelings in the question.

When you click on the pointer finger a window pops up and says, “CARESS. Build a ship by caressing and following the sounds”. You can only shade in an area in which the speaker is moaning towards. At the end of this screen a shadow of a naked woman shows up. The way she is laying resembles the shape of a ship.

When you click on the middle finger a window pops up and says, “HIT. Hit the fly to be able to read the text”. Immediately this fly starts buzzing around your screening and leaving a travel of “Z’s”. The more that you try to click on the fly the faster he moves. Eventually he starts to retrace his steps. Below is a picture of this screen.

When you click on the index finger a window pops up and says, “SPREAD. Move and click the mouse upwards, downwards, and sideward’s to create a musical painting. This scene is more comfortable with headphones”. The music in this scene was smooth jazz. The faster that you made the colors spread the faster the music would go. The first time I clicked on this finger it was tie-dye pink. The next time it was tie-dye pink and green. When the whole screen is colored it automatically brings you to the pinky finger.

When you click on the pinky finger a window pops up and says, “BLOW. Bow to read the text and then to spread the words. This scene requires a microphone”. When you blow on the screen snowflakes move away from that area to show the saying “Touching with one’s finger what another person feels”.

This game was definitely one that made you think. It was very addicting. My roommates thought it was a bit strange to hear grunting noises in the kitchen, but when they realized what I was doing they got their computers out and started playing Toucher too! This game was very sexual. I disagree with what the other person in our class said. I think the authors did a great job of making this interactive. In some real life situations you aren’t actually being the one that is solely moving things, but your reactions move it. For example if you are in a car, you aren’t the object on the street that is moving. But you are in a vehicle which is moving on the road.

Here is another example of Serge Bouchardon work. It is very similar to Toucher’s interactional style. When you initially click on the link you hear nature music in the background. I took Loss of Grasp as being alone in a crowded room.

 

Here is a direct link if you want to explore more work by Serge Bouchardon!

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Do you touch me when I touch you?

February 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

Using the internet is a bit like interacting with the real world whilst wearing a set of thick gloves.  There is presence, there is material, but it is not to be interacted with first hand. A simulation of interaction can be achieved, but through a series of proxies: input gleaned from the mouse, keyboard, microphone, and webcam.

Toucher by Serge Bourchardon, Kevin Carpentier, and Stephanie Spenle manages to make the reader hyper aware of the glove more than it succeeds in removing it. Our awareness of touch, of interaction and its effects are heightened by the proxy. Every interaction is deliberate, awareness of the exchange from physical to digital space is required to experience each lexia, each devoted to a different form of touch.

Working across the navigation screen right to left, you come to the lexia “move”. You are asked to move about your mouse, to arrange and shuffle through a mix and match of queries. The first query pairing kicks off “move” with the question that perhaps drives the whole work: “Do you touch me when I touch you?”  Which is a tricky enough question before you exit the physical world.  You can rest your fingertips on a surface, you are touching that surface, but it is not touching you back.  Touch is qualified by sentience, or at least responsiveness, driven by a seeming ‘mind of its own’.  Even the peas and the mashed potatoes touching is driven by some malevolent will. I digress. When you, a human, touches something, it is that thing you expect to respond, in some manner or another.  The doorbell gives under a finger’s pressure, though that is not the ultimate intended result. That result is the doorbell ringing, then someone answering the door.

It is in this state of removal Toucher exists.  Your breath may blow away the letters and snowflakes that have accumulated on your screen, but only when received as audial input via microphone and a dozen other invisible processes resulting in the scattering of pixels.  Of course this happens so swiftly you might not think on it, but for the remove.  There is no stepping up to the monitor and blowing away the graphics as you would dust on a shelf. You must first locate a microphone and assure your computer you are okay with interacting with the work (snapping on the gloves, if you will) and then interacting with the microphone to see the idea of your breath displaced by several inches or feet as its effects are carried out on screen.

In the process of simulating the senses, trying to create something instinctive, rather than our trained proficiency of by proxy interaction, Toucher occasionally drives right past instinctive into innovative. Well, that might be a bit strong a word, but in its reluctance to adhere to standard digital interface interaction Toucher has readers learn connections they may not utilize. In ‘caress,’ where a seeing person would base their interaction with the object by sight, Toucher has you associate touch to sound. As you caress the screen (via mouse or trackpad) you are instructed to follow the sound in order to form a sense of an object, rather than relying on your sense of vision.

Toucher takes the processes of input with which computer users are already intensely familiar, and seeks to streamline them, though not in ways you would expect. What would be obvious in the physical world seems surprising in the digital (the sound of a touch for example.)  Toucher ends up as a sort of ‘how to’ guide to interaction, there is more than one way to interact with your computer.  The boundaries between digital and physical are blurring.  Or at the very least, they are doing better at convincing you they blur.

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