Telehaptic Sense-acts and Distancing Effects

This article explores the phenomenon of telehaptics, considered at the intersection of concepts of distance, sensation, and imagination. It delves into the complexities of touch as both a physical and psychological sense that indicates the threshold between one and the other, at once connecting and separating. As an aesthetic experience, telehaptics implies self-reflexivity of sensation informed by the awareness of the apparatus of perception as the mediating component, which is pre- and trans-subjective. Through examples like Marnix de Nijs’s TAST and Michel van der Aa’s opera Upload, I investigate how telehaptic interfaces and artistic interpretations create a paradoxical interplay between presence and absence, where the acts of sensing transpose one into the realm of abstract thought and imagination. Seen this way, telehaptics offers a unique form of shared presence that bridges physical and virtual realms while underscoring the inherent separation and mediation in human communication, opening an experience beyond distance.