Harmonicity of Sound Alters Roughness Perception

Multisensory integration refers to the integration of multiple senses by the nervous system. Auditory andtactile features are closely related senses as can be understood from the fact that adjectives such as soft,rough, and warm are used commonly for auditory and tactile features. Previous studies show that auditorycues play an important role to assess the roughness of a surface. Different characteristics of auditory cuessuch as amplitude and frequency may cause perceiving surface rougher or smoother. In this study, weinvestigate the effects of harmonic and inharmonic sounds on roughness perception to examine whetherauditory roughness will affect the tactile roughness perception while they are presented simultaneously.We expected the participants to perceive surfaces rougher while they listen to inharmonic sounds due toauditory roughness. We presented simultaneous and sequential harmonic and inharmonic sounds withthree sandpapers with different roughness levels (P100, P120, P 150 grit numbers) to the participants. Wefound that participants perceive sandpaper with the P120 grit number rougher while they listen tosimultaneous inharmonic sounds than simultaneous harmonic sounds. However, any effect of harmonicityon the sandpapers with P100 and P150 grit numbers was not observed. We suggest that auditoryroughness may enhance tactile roughness perception for surfaces with particular roughness levels,possibly when the roughness estimation from the tactile sense remains ambiguous.

Make this tango viral: Touching toward the untouchable in tele-synaesthesia performance

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an uncanny rift between tact and touch as it expands the virtual towards its potential. Layer upon layer of new information has been repeatedly revising and reformulating our sense of touch. The unconditional freedom of touch needs to be rendered accountable in this rift of time and space. The act of touching entails individual acknowledging the risk of reaching towards the unknown or the known. Tracing with a tactile sense of touch is to be tactful about how, where and what can such act of touching could reach, especially in the context of communicative technology. This article focuses on the possibility of virtual sensibility by challenging ways to feel touched beyond the nostalgic narratives that attempt to indict communicative technology with the loss of touch. To replenish and reinstate touch through tele-synaesthesia performance, I ask: how to elongate our somatosensensation and echo the embodied experience of touching through virtual connectivity? Tele-synaesthesia performance joints telematic and synaesthetic experience together to embody the incorporeality of touch through virtual connectivity. It embodies the injunction of physical contact and challenges what can and cannot be touched by suturing one sensuous modality to another. Inspired by Paul Sermon’s artistic production of Telematic Quarantine (2020) and Pandemic Encounters (2020), that tele-presents the stories of self (isolation), I have created The Best Facial (2021): a series of one-to-one participatory tele-synaesthesia performances, where I became a virtual aesthetician and performed ‘virtual facial care’ on Zoom amid the second wave of the pandemic in the United Kingdom. In this article, I will discuss how tele-synaesthesia performance could trigger tactile experiences in the participants in reference to Michel Foucault’s concept Heterotopia (1986) that allegorically address the incompatible physical places in the society. I discuss how to elicit an affective sensory response from non-tactile senses through virtual touch, as stated by Naomi Bennett’s ‘Telematic connections: sensing, feeling, being in space together’ (2020). I refer to Legacy Russell’s discussion on glitch (2020) to analyse the possible future of tele-synaesthesia performance and its potential for expanding virtual connectivity with an ethical touch of a non-performative refusal of the present.

The Idea of Landing Sites and Its Inheritance through Tactileology

From the perspective of sustainability, empowering people to live positively without being dominated by death is an important issue. One thing we can do in this vein is to expand one’s own physical sensation, which is the basis for us to live. From this point of view, Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins’ idea of “landing sites” is very important. Landing sites are physical experiences that result from person–environment collaboration. In order to make as many people as possible aware of their physical sensations through landing sites, Arakawa and Gins created artificial environments such as “Site of Reversible Destiny Yoro” where people could gain new physical sensations. They wanted people to build new ethics and move toward social reformation based on their new physical sensations. However, at present, these artificial environments have some problems. It is the time to seriously consider how we can pass on the experience of landing sites to future generations. The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to the question by Yasuhiro Suzuki’s scientific research on tactile sense, called tactileology. I first introduce Arakawa and Gin’s text about the idea of “landing sites” and make clear its importance. Next, I point out that, now, “landing sites” present certain difficulties. I then confirm that tactileology inherits the idea of “landing sites”.

Performance of Oak Tasar Silk Waste/ Viscose Blended Knitted Fabrics through Kawabata Evaluation System (KES) for Apparel use

Tactile sense or the sense of touch has been an important aspect of the human interactions with the environment. The study of tactile sense, or the haptics, has received tremendous attentions for its potential applications. This paper introduces a novel approach for evaluating fabric sensory responses. Attempt has been made to objectively assess the oak tasar silk waste/ viscose blended knitted fabrics of two different yarn counts in order to obtain the scores on various parameters of hand. The Kawabata Evaluation System (KES) used five highly sensitive instruments that measure fabric bending, shearing, tensile and compressive stiffness, as well as the smoothness and frictional properties of a fabric surface. The instrument also gave direct value of primary hand value and total value of the fabric. It the findings of the research revealed that, 40%OTW:60%viscose blended fabric of 15 Nm yarn count depicted best results for smoothness, uniformity, tactile sensation, aesthetic appearance and total hand value.

A Minimal Sense of Here-ness

In this paper, I give an account of a hitherto neglected kind of ‘here’, which does not work as an intentional indexical. Instead, it automatically refers to the immediate perceptual environment of the subject’s body, which is known as peripersonal space. In between the self and the external world, there is something like a buffer zone, a place in which objects and events have a unique immediate significance for the subject because they may soon be in contact with her. I argue that seeing objects as being here in a minimal sense means seeing them in the place in which the perceptual system expects the world and the body to collide. I further argue that this minimal notion of here-content gives rise to a tactile sense of presence. It provides a unique experiential access to the reality of the seen object by making us aware of its ability to have an effect on us.

Sound Coding Color to Improve Artwork Appreciation by People with Visual Impairments

The recent development of color coding in tactile pictograms helps people with visual impairments (PVI) appreciate the visual arts. The auditory sense, in conjunction with (or possibly as an alternative to) the tactile sense, would allow PVI to perceive colors in a way that would be difficult to achieve with just a tactile stimulus. Sound coding colors (SCCs) can replicate three characteristics of colors, i.e., hue, chroma, and value, by matching them with three characteristics of sound, i.e., timbre, intensity, and pitch. This paper examines relationships between sound (melody) and color mediated by tactile pattern color coding and provides sound coding for hue, chroma, and value to help PVI deepen their relationship with visual art. Our two proposed SCC sets use melody to improve upon most SCC sets currently in use by adding more colors (18 colors in 6 hues). User experience and identification tests were conducted with 12 visually impaired and 8 sighted adults, and the results suggest that the SCC sets were helpful for the participants.

Colors in Silence – The Journey of a Synesthete in Understanding the Senses

This paper will explore how a synesthete, RC, perceives colors, shapes, and textures in silence. RC has sound-to-color synesthesia, where at least one color is associated with each pitch on the Western music scale. Listening to silence strips all sound down to the bare minimum in terms of color or texture. As discovered through weekly meditation in a “Deep Listening” class, RC places a pitch to everything at least audible when plunged into silence, trying hard to capture the colors of every available sound. The silence also forces a more pronounced tactile sense that RC tries to grasp together with the colors. Every experience with the sound however, is present but muddled, and difficult to understand. Silence becomes an uncomfortable world of uncertainty and it becomes vital to grasp the visual and tactile nuances that are a part of it. This paper reflects RC’s progression through silence towards an understanding of her senses. What is silence? And how does the synesthete grapple with it?