"Toucher refers to the physical act of touching and reflects upon the possibilities of developing haptic sensation in a digital environment. While the first physical act of reading a book is to touch it and turn the page, here the physical act of reading requires a mouse, microphone, helmet, and camera. In this sense, reading becomes truly multi-sensorial, since the reader is invited to caress, blow, and brush the work in order to make reading possible. Additionally, there is a section hidden within the menu that has to be found by 'touching' the screen." -- from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2
Experiencing the Work
Visitors interact with this work via a variety of methods. Visitors may select French or English before beginning the work, and mouse movement is needed in order to click through the majority of navigation in the piece. Once a language is selected, the visitor is presented with the index page with the outline of an open hand. Navigation here consists of clicking on buttons and on parts of the hand. Continued exploration of the work involves different types of touching the screen with the finger, moving and clicking the mouse, dragging the mouse, blowing into the device’s microphone, and using the device’s webcam. Pop-up instructions and permission to access the device microphone and webcam were necessary to run “Blow” and “Brush” pages. Several sections feature rapidly-moving text and text that fades out of view. The work's "return" button is low-contrast, and parts of the work ("Blow" and "Hit") contain overlapping text. The navigation menu items and the “Blow” page contain rasterized text, which cannot be accessed by screen reading software or other similar tools. In “Brush” the work accesses the visitor’s appearance through the webcam and displays it on the screen. As the visitor moves in front of the webcam, the work reflects that movement.
1 COPY IN THE NEXT
Published in March, 2021 by Bouchardon, Serge.
The artist gave Dene Grigar the files in 2021.
COPY MEDIA FORMAT
Web