Touch Me, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
We have five senses, but touch is the one that the least is known about. Touch Me at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) sets out to redress this through an exhibition of products and artworks designed to be touched.
But visitors expecting a luscious sensory experience may be disappointed: Touch Me is more about interaction then tactility.
The products on display are domestic items, and the first part of the gallery has been turned into two rooms: a kitchen/living room area and a bedroom/office. This house metaphor really provides two 'white cube' spaces in which to display the objects.
Visitors are invited to touch objects marked with a finger symbol, and there is a lot to do here. In the kitchen/living room space, you can sit in Yoshi Saito's Hug Chair - a soft, felt, all-enveloping chair that two people can sit on or lie in.
You can feel wallpaper that has unlikely textures, and try to read the Braille blind and ceramic titles. In the bedroom/office there is a rug made from the stuffed fingers of knitted gloves. It's a wonderfully sensuous exhibit.
These exhibits all require the sense of touch to explore them. However, there are other exhibits that need to be touched only to make them work: the dress that gives off different smells when you step on pads attached to it; a table that has a heat-sensitive surface, so that putting your hand on it leaves an imprint.
Or you can try a palm-sized sonic texting device: move the miniature joystick until you hear the sound of the letter you want to type and then press a button to see the letter appear on the screen.
These exhibits are great fun, but are they really different from interactives in any other gallery? The exhibition places great emphasis on touch as a sensation, but that isn't the same as touch as interaction.
If it is sensing through touch that needs to be brought to our attention, as the exhibition claims, then these exhibits don't contribute to visitors' understanding or experience.
Of course, we interact with objects every day, and this is largely done by touching or holding them. Among the exhibits on display are some that have been designed to bring new sensory experiences to things we regularly interact with.
These include a textile keyboard and reflexology shoes, but disappointingly they are behind glass or barriers and are out of reach to visitors.
The house metaphor continues in the next area of the gallery, which is presented as a garden, complete with fence and benches. This is the science part. Three candy-striped kiosks contain interactive experiments that explore touch.
Fetish or Phobia asks visitors to put their hand through a flap and touch the mystery object. The objects are visible from the other side of the kiosk, and once you see them you can understand why we like to look before we touch.
Another kiosk explores how we find out what things are by feeling them; and the final one uses touch to confound our ability to tell the position and movement of our body.
Also in this area is an exhibit curated by the artist Richard Wentworth. This concentrates on the mouth as an organ of touch by displaying 'a democracy of cups, mugs, beakers'. It's an interesting exhibit from an innovative artist, but it feels out of place here.
It is something that needs to be looked at and thought about that has been situated in a largely interactive area, positioned in a place that feels out of the way, and sidelined by the bright surroundings.
The final area of the exhibition is filled with huge interactive exhibits and artworks. Most require two players. Collabora is a large-screen version of PacMan in which two players on space-hoppers must combine their movements to control the PacMan.
If you don't think you're up to it, try playing a game of table tennis in which visual effects are projected onto the table as the ball bounces.
Alone? Then try Stroke, which creates a digital forest when you touch live plants. This is really fun, but none of the games ask visitors to use their sense of touch. They are primarily about interacting with digital media and objects.
Touch Me wants to show how design can make more of our senses and some of the science behind this. The ideas behind the exhibition are clearly set out in the accompanying booklet, which says a lot about the sense of touch, its role in our lives and why we should pay more attention to it.
It is critical of interactions that 'provide few tactile rewards'. It's a shame, then, that Touch Me doesn't heed its own words: too often it has fallen into the trap it wants us to avoid by asking us to interact with objects and think only of the outcome, not the sensation.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
Project data
Cost: Undisclosed
Collaborators: V&A, Wellcome Trust
Designer: V&A
Graphics: GTF
Curators: Lauren Parker, Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Exhibition ends: 29 August 2005
We have five senses, but touch is the one that the least is known about. Touch Me at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) sets out to redress this through an exhibition of products and artworks designed to be touched.
But visitors expecting a luscious sensory experience may be disappointed: Touch Me is more about interaction then tactility.
The products on display are domestic items, and the first part of the gallery has been turned into two rooms: a kitchen/living room area and a bedroom/office. This house metaphor really provides two 'white cube' spaces in which to display the objects.
Visitors are invited to touch objects marked with a finger symbol, and there is a lot to do here. In the kitchen/living room space, you can sit in Yoshi Saito's Hug Chair - a soft, felt, all-enveloping chair that two people can sit on or lie in.
You can feel wallpaper that has unlikely textures, and try to read the Braille blind and ceramic titles. In the bedroom/office there is a rug made from the stuffed fingers of knitted gloves. It's a wonderfully sensuous exhibit.
These exhibits all require the sense of touch to explore them. However, there are other exhibits that need to be touched only to make them work: the dress that gives off different smells when you step on pads attached to it; a table that has a heat-sensitive surface, so that putting your hand on it leaves an imprint.
Or you can try a palm-sized sonic texting device: move the miniature joystick until you hear the sound of the letter you want to type and then press a button to see the letter appear on the screen.
These exhibits are great fun, but are they really different from interactives in any other gallery? The exhibition places great emphasis on touch as a sensation, but that isn't the same as touch as interaction.
If it is sensing through touch that needs to be brought to our attention, as the exhibition claims, then these exhibits don't contribute to visitors' understanding or experience.
Of course, we interact with objects every day, and this is largely done by touching or holding them. Among the exhibits on display are some that have been designed to bring new sensory experiences to things we regularly interact with.
These include a textile keyboard and reflexology shoes, but disappointingly they are behind glass or barriers and are out of reach to visitors.
The house metaphor continues in the next area of the gallery, which is presented as a garden, complete with fence and benches. This is the science part. Three candy-striped kiosks contain interactive experiments that explore touch.
Fetish or Phobia asks visitors to put their hand through a flap and touch the mystery object. The objects are visible from the other side of the kiosk, and once you see them you can understand why we like to look before we touch.
Another kiosk explores how we find out what things are by feeling them; and the final one uses touch to confound our ability to tell the position and movement of our body.
Also in this area is an exhibit curated by the artist Richard Wentworth. This concentrates on the mouth as an organ of touch by displaying 'a democracy of cups, mugs, beakers'. It's an interesting exhibit from an innovative artist, but it feels out of place here.
It is something that needs to be looked at and thought about that has been situated in a largely interactive area, positioned in a place that feels out of the way, and sidelined by the bright surroundings.
The final area of the exhibition is filled with huge interactive exhibits and artworks. Most require two players. Collabora is a large-screen version of PacMan in which two players on space-hoppers must combine their movements to control the PacMan.
If you don't think you're up to it, try playing a game of table tennis in which visual effects are projected onto the table as the ball bounces.
Alone? Then try Stroke, which creates a digital forest when you touch live plants. This is really fun, but none of the games ask visitors to use their sense of touch. They are primarily about interacting with digital media and objects.
Touch Me wants to show how design can make more of our senses and some of the science behind this. The ideas behind the exhibition are clearly set out in the accompanying booklet, which says a lot about the sense of touch, its role in our lives and why we should pay more attention to it.
It is critical of interactions that 'provide few tactile rewards'. It's a shame, then, that Touch Me doesn't heed its own words: too often it has fallen into the trap it wants us to avoid by asking us to interact with objects and think only of the outcome, not the sensation.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
Project data
Cost: Undisclosed
Collaborators: V&A, Wellcome Trust
Designer: V&A
Graphics: GTF
Curators: Lauren Parker, Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Exhibition ends: 29 August 2005
