Mapping Touch & Touchscapes

“Touch, also called tactition, mechanoreception or somatic sensation, is the sense of pressure perception, generally in the skin. There are a variety of nerve endings that respond to variations in pressure (e.g., firm, brushing, and sustained). (source)

Feeling Maps: Braille Maps

• Texture of map represents (mostly) visible stuff in the environment
  

Resources

• Design Issues of Relief Maps for Haptic Displays (Article)
• Haptic Soundscape Map of the University of Oregon (Map)

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Feeling Places: Maps of Haptic Sensations

• Texture of map represents texture / feeling of stuff in the environment
  

Non-geographic collage of textures/rubbings (source)

• Denis Wood: “We rubbed everything I could put paper and a rubbing crayon on, concrete pavement, brick walks and walls, tree bark. We rubbed the sidewalk graffiti too, and of course all manhole covers, water meter covers and the like.”
• can’t find an actual mapped example!

Resources

• Touch Vocabulary (PDF)