Taking an Extended Embodied Perspective of Touch: Connection-Disconnection in iVR

Abstract

Bringing touch into VR experiences through haptics is considered increasingly important for user engagement and fostering feelings of presence and immersion, yet few qualitative studies have explored users' iVR touch experiences. This paper takes an embodied approach–bringing attention to the tactile-kinaesthetic body–to explore users' wholistic experiences of touch in iVR, moving beyond the cutaneous and tactile elements of “feeling” to elaborate upon themes of movement and kinetics. Our findings show how both touch connections and disconnections emerged though material forms of tactility (the controller, body positioning, tactile expectations) and through “felt proximities” and the tactile-kinaesthetic experience thus shaping the sense of presence. The analysis shows three key factors that influence connection and disconnection, and how connection is re-navigated or sought at moments of experienced disconnection: a sense of control or agency; identity; and bridging between the material and virtual. This extended notion of touch deepens our understanding of its role in feelings of presence by providing insight into a range of factors related to notions of touch – both physical and virtual–that come into play in creating a sense of connection or presence (e.g., histories, expectations), and highlights the potential for iVR interaction to attend to the body beyond the hands in terms of touch.

Collaborative Robots and Tangled Passages of Tactile-Affects

“…associating types of touch with defined emotional responses). Rather, the extended view of touch that we promote foregrounds the "social, sensory and material environments" [42, p.130] where touch unfolds, a lens that we have applied to a range of technological areas including haptics in immersive VR [44], [45]. Our analytical framework, that rests on an extended conceptualization of touch, emerges from a sensitivity to a range of encounters between bodies-technologies-environments and is pursued through investigative dimensions that span across material and social planes (see fig.…”

Editorial

“…We have sought to map the features, materiality and semiotic potential of touch, and to ask under what social conditions and in what social contexts are touch-based resources shaped through their use by people to become semiotic resources or modes, as well as what people use touch to achieve and the established conventions that inform their use. For example, we have used a multimodal framework to explore what is counted as touch in virtual reality encounters (Jewitt et al, 2021; Price et al, 2021). We have also explored the use of digitally mediated touch to communicate intimacy and reassurance between friends and family, and what meanings appear to be associated with the dimensions of touch (location, duration, or pressure), and how these are used (Price et al, 2022).…”

Feeling our way: methodological explorations on researching touch through uncertainty

“…Taking contexts such as these, this chapter draws out how (and where) touch is being re-conceptualised through the work of designers, computer scientists and engineers, and differently so by the media and the public, in the realm of the digital (Jewitt, Leder Mackley, et al, 2020 ). In the unsettled digital space, there is less transparency concerning where a touch comes from, who or what is touching, and how immersive (tactile) experiences and a sense of remote connection and presence are created (Jewitt, Chubinidze, et al, 2021 ; Jewitt, Leder Mackley, et al, 2020 ; Price et al, 2021 ). In short, digital touch experiences raise new questions for what counts as touch and trouble the relationship between touch, truth and certainty in myriad ways.…”