Haptic Voices brings VibraFusionLab’s haptic technology to an interactive hybrid-online venue.
“Haptic”, or the science and technology of transmitting and understanding information through the sense of touch, is expanded into large scale through a ten channel vibrotactile wall, installed inaugurally at InterAccess, with installations to follow at Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Innovation and Tangled Art + Disability.
Visitors to the project are invited to stand against the wall to experience vibrations that are controlled by online participants. Online participants will chant, hum, and vocalize into the microphones on their computers as the sound is played through the vibrotactile transducers in the walls in real time. Online participants are able to control the position and location of the vibrations, manipulating through intensity, frequency components of the voice, or through the interface controlled by the participants’ mouse.
Three sound compositions are available, specifically designed for the vibrotactile experience as both vibration and sound:
- perception/perception by Toronto composer John Gzowski,
- Dendrocopos by Deaf Irish composer Ailís Ní Ríain, and
- Strictly Vibes by Jim Ruxton from Hamilton, one of the wall’s creators.
The online platform facilitating participant interaction was created by Hamilton-based web designer Simon Lebrun.
By using vibration as the final output, Haptic Voices is equally accessible to Deaf and hard of hearing communities to experience the wall. With a camera in the gallery facing the haptic wall, online participants are able to view how they are interacting with participants in the gallery. VibraFusionLab has not previously engaged with an online audience, marking this major installation as the first of its kind, transporting global ‘voices’ into an immersive tactile body experience.
The show featuring Haptic Voices also includes additional vibrotactile works by London based artist David Bobier.