Tactile Field is partially inspired by the notion that there is something fundamental about our ability to make an imprint on the world. With the piece we wanted to take some of the fascination with making immediate but temporary marks and traces in our environment. Tactile Field posits movement – representations of individual and collective movement, and gestures, as the activity of the community itself – as the organizing principle that animates a responsive, material, site-specific system or ecology.
Tactile Field is a layered system that extends a fabric of sensor-driven input points into a selection of sites throughout the building with which people have regular physical contact. Circulation areas such as handrails, steps, and buttons, as well as furniture pieces – such as a bench in the lobby area – are embedded with tactile inputs where the ambient movement or direct gestures of visitors to the space will have an effect on the image or pattern displayed. The project possesses an inherent notion of collaboration in the sense that a viewer whose movements affects the image is working with an image or pattern that is created by the presence of other people in the space.
with Kate Armstrong, Marc Baumgartner and Adam Chapman