Towards a typology of touch in multisensory makerspaces

Abstract

This research examined the role of touch in creative media production in the context of educational and community makerspaces. Touch, while only recently explored in digital media production, is a crucial perceptive sense through which to experience the world, particularly in two- and three-dimensional making, and to explore texture, temperature, and vibration. As an embodied experience through the hands, fingers, and other body parts, touch affords knowledge and agency. This paper describes research that investigated how students, ages 8–13, used touch to make media. The findings illustrate how different touch types—explorative, creative, auxiliary, evocative, orchestrated, and transformative–emerged as central to the students’ media practices for making products. These findings are important given the recent applications of embodiment theory and its relevance to creative digital media making in education and society.