The aesthetic of a multilayered interactive skin

Digital media and interactive technologies provide the opportunity to augment and alter the characteristic qualities of sensual and aesthetic perception. The visual and auditory senses are culturally predominant, but nevertheless the sense of touch receives nowadays increasing attention. This paper presents the perceptive potentials of touch sensations and their influences on our emotions. We will discuss how we can take advantage of these potentials using digital media and technology and how touch stimuli are forming aesthetic experiences. In this paper we are investigating the influence of an interactive “skin”prototype on the human touch perception in the architectonical context. Palabras clave: sense of touch; perception; interactivity; augmented architecture Introduction Our senses convey an image of the environment and influence our experience and emotions. Sensations we experience, shape in combination with the cultural environment our aesthetic preferences. Today in the digital age new technologies and interactive systems are able to produce augmented architecture and to modify and extend the sensual qualities and hence our aesthetic perception. Thereby the visual and auditory senses are predominant, due to their cultural hegemony. But recently another sense growingly receives more attention: the sense of touch. Touch stimuli are capable of providing us a direct feeling of the environment and serve as nonverbal communication channel between people. Touch sensations are correlating with our emotional states and are already used in touch based therapies for mental disorders. Moreover touch stimuli are forming aesthetic experiences and they are not limited to our hands, but engage the entire body. Thereby the common association is the reception by the skin, which provides with its heterogeneous receptor network diverse sensible zones and different perceptive qualities. Within the somatosensory process a general distinction is made between this cutaneous system, and the socalled kinesthetic system, which indicates that muscles, joints and tendons are involved in perceiving (Lederman, Klatzky, 2009). Subsystems like the tactile, haptic and dynamic touch are used to categorize the different forms of touch application and user behavior (Gibson, 1962). In this text we are using the word haptic as general term for these various stimuli. Nowadays we are using the sense of touch to navigate through touchscreens and other interface menus, whereupon our fingertips are mostly input agents rather than stimuli receiver. In the same manner interactive architecture, at the interface between digital media and architecture, is using this sense to trigger functional processes but doesn’t make use of the wide bandwidth of its perceptive qualities. This paper discusses the concept of touch aesthetic, which we investigated by different reactive surface prototypes. We are presenting the technical prototype concept, which is characterized by the gridlike surface structure consisting of identical cells, containing diverse constructive overlaid actuators. With different intensities and activations of the actuators, the surface produces so called tangible patterns. In empirical tests we explore what kind of reaction is provoked in the user and how these responses are correlating with aesthetic perceptions. Furthermore we are presenting biofeedback systems as an analytic instrument and future bidirectional communication channel between the surface and the user. Sense of touch: Cultural role and the digital age The hierarchical division into five senses is a familiar concept and can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Aristoteles. Although he established the hierarchical classification, with the sense of side on the first pla-