The senses in technology

To many artists and art educators, an important missing aspect in the involvement of any kind of technology in art is the missing sensory experience. We can’t touch our art here, we can’t smell the tools, we can’t hear the noises, and we can’t taste the paint. We can see, but our sight is flat; the texture here is an illusion. How do I respond to this? We can sense differently like someone who is deaf speaks differently or a blind person reads a book differently. It is not lesser; it is different. Where there is something missing there is also something more.

TOUCH

We can’t touch the art, we can’t feel it.

When are we ever allowed to touch art? The artist, of course, touches a painting or a sculpture when it is made, but as a viewer we can only see it. However, we may touch a picture on our screens. Here, when we touch things our brains act as our sense of touch (inevitably, that is what a feeling is). We can hover with a mouse and learn what something is. We click on something and read or travel somewhere else. Touch is understanding.

SIGHT

The experience of seeing artwork projected or on the screen just isn't the same

You can use a projector to show images so that is a lesser alternative to the “real thing” or you can us the projector as an alternate real way of seeing art. It is the same since your eye sees the image through the light going to the eye and the brain understands it as an image. It is not the painting itself; it is a reproduction through ones and zeros transmitted through light.