My Idea:
In my opinion, touch is a shock that can be comforting. When my skin brush across someone else’s, I feel an electric shock traveling up my nerves. This tingling sensation gives me goosebumps and a strong emotion of excitement. The tremors running through my body sounds like an alluring melody sang in high-pitch vocals.
At the same time, the tremor can make one fearful. Tremors can come in the form of a million fire ants crawling up my four limbs, constantly biting me at every millisecond, or a numbing shock from the sting of a jellyfish while swimming in the cool embrace of the waters. The result is fear, followed by numbness and the gradual transition to desensitization. I perceive desensitization as a climax of an emotional responsive state when I no longer feel anything through touch – when touch becomes incapable, thus intangible.
However, the desire to touch and to be touch is innate in us. We seek for comfort when we are shock and we seek for shock when we are in comfort. This cycle continues endlessly.
When touch reaches a climax, it can only repeat itself.
In a virtual world, in separate spaces, we are limited to touch through our physical boundaries. We can only make use of our visual and auditory senses along with the aid of different types of programmed sensors to guide us through our exchange in touch.
The Narrative I envision:
The concept of my narrative revolves around the theme of ‘Touch’ in a futuristic context. Imagine, in a futuristic world, how will touch be like? As science advances along with the scientific knowledge and craftsmanship learnt through biomimicry, we venture into the realms of technology and eventually use the craft to replace the role of Mother nature. These effects are already evident now: rats can be made to glow in the dark, cellulose can grow into clothes, clothes will open up in vents when we sweat.
In addition, we can change our environment to suit our needs: plants are watered at regular timings with an irrigation system, we can control the temperature of our environment with the invention of air-condition, we can modify the weather so that rain happen through cloud seedling. Our environment is no longer the same and we can expect these external changes to reflect in us too. We do not need to talk to communicate our ideas across to one another. We can interact across different spaces. Maybe we can even interact in our dreams. We look different. We take on different personas inspired from the skills we learnt from mother nature.
We interact with each other while we are in separate cubicles through seeing and hearing. We move in short actions, like a programmed machine running through a series of causes and effects stimulated by what we see and hear. Somewhere, there is light. Somewhere this light causes movement in another space through sight. Somewhere the movement bring about sound. Somewhere, there is sound. Somewhere this sound causes movement…and the cycle repeats.