ABSTRACT

‘Tangible play’ therefore considers how the senses of touch are mediated, in fact ‘remediated’, in manifold ways through digital art installations and performances. ‘Remediation’, explain Bolter and Grusin, is ‘the formal logic by which new media technologies refashion prior media forms’. The mediations of touch in the performances selected certainly exemplify both remediation and hypermediacy, then, as each of the performances is ongoing, processual, performative and fragmented, utilizing various technologies of screens, skins, prostheses and bodysuits to perform tangible play and reconfigure the sensorium. Other performances involve prosthetic enhancements to the body, the interface of body and technology, and later playing with kinaesthetic elements that become choreographed into his own body movements. The transforming power of touch and the technological expansion of the sensorium is the focus of this second foray into haptic aesthetics, illustrating this through using a selection of key digital performances and artworks.