January 14 – Tactility

Following one of last weeks’ numerous tangents, this week’s episode of SCREENS will feature our discussion on tactility in media. While movies, TV shows, and computer games certainly appeal to our senses of sight and sound, how do these approaches work to immerse us within the on-screen world? How do our senses contribute to the illusion of being present within a film? How does haptic technology work this way when playing Super Smash Bros.? When will Smell-o-Vision make a triumphant return?

These questions and more may or may not be answered during the next episode of SCREENS. Tune in to Riverwest Radio tonight at 10pm or catch the recording the next day.

(Tonight’s Recap)

We began our show with the roll of the dice (a couple different dice, actually!) and talked about how touch, as one of the many senses we’re using to engage with screens, creates a more sensuous experience of media. Tactility, the Kinect, and the rumble feature of video game controllers were discussed and we waffled back and forth on whether these handheld senses helped players experience the game more fully or if shaking disrupted gameplay (more often than not, it only disrupts when it does not work well). Furthermore, the development of handheld gaming presents a merging of screens and touching where we glide and imprint our fingers over the screen to create gameplay, a curious affirmation of the screen as both barrier and interface. We also wondered whether we were imagining memories of touch in our media, such as the whirr of the film projector or the vibration of the phone. Whether or not tactility conditions/disciplines us more effectively than hands-off media was broached, but not decisively agreed or disagreed upon.

Our discussion also lilted into that of cinema and photography when we thought about the ways an image is “touched” (handheld camera, mobile image capture) and “re-touched” (image editing, filters, Instagram). These conceptions of how an image is understood as pure or preformed seem to come from more photographic conceptions of film and we mulled over how digital manipulation enables more dexterous control over images to suit our subjective experience. We also wondered briefly whether hipsters should be held accountable for appropriating vintage forms of representation (if their turn towards the analog merely retreats from mainstream consumer culture or motions away from crisp digital imagery inadequate to our sensory experience). Discussions on the “newness” of these remediations and the vague totemic nature of the term brought us to our topic for next week: Digital.

For a video archive of the show, check out http://bambuser.com/v/5216062