Virtual Sensing Knife and Haptic Hanbok

The exhibition »Stretching Materialities« was the opportunity to ignite new collaborations between humanities, design and natural sciences. We were especially fascinated by the project of the macromolecular physicists Mohammad Fardin Gholami and Prof. Jürgen P. Rabe around the experimental device »Sensing Knife«. The »Sensing Knife« aims at converting the technology of the Atomic Force Microscope into a neurosurgical instrument, a machine that could ›feel like the hand of a surgeon‹ —at the level of the individual cell. The AFM was invented in 1986, and the technology is in constant development ever since. Two of these microscopes were on display in one of the vitrines. The device is built around a swappable microcantilever often made of silicon dioxide, probably one of the thinnest, finest, and most sensitive human-manufactured measuring artifacts. It is used to scan objects whose size is so minuscule that they are impossible to see with visible light — because the wavelengths of visible light are literally too large to interact with such entities.

Like a blind person with a stick, the physicist is probing the material which lies beyond the scope of their perception, their senses augmented by information inputs that can take multiple shapes — 2D or 3D visualizations. Their prosthetic crystalline fingers, sensing matter down the scale, are sometimes portrayed as submarines sounding the ocean’s floor.

The company MicroMotion, one of the manufacturers of the cantilevers, has used the submarine as a key visual on its promotional material sent in the expensive boxes of cantilevers. One of these posters adorned the lab wall on Maxime’s previous visit, which inspired our installation work. Moreover, it points again in the direction of the immersion of the experimenter into a fluid medium that they experience through their sensory immersion, sounding the bottom floor of matter.

Another thread of this collaboration was a question on cosmotechnics (Hui 2016). If technologies are based on different cosmologies, what would a VR haptic suit based on Korean cosmology feel like? Unlike the »Mission Impossible-type« of hard military-styled haptic vests available on the market, haptic garment based on Korean 두루마기 durumagi(overcoat) and 쾌자kweja(long vest) aims to give a different understanding of the human body and the cosmos compared to the Anglo-European ones. Flowy silk haptic hanbok invites the wearers to construe the body as a microcosmos which becomes along with the ever-changing vibrant universe. If the conception of the 3D ›digital material‹ and the interaction concept were taking much of the visual form, the sound and the haptic feedback were at all times a very central concern to the project: how can we translate the vibration of the AFM to the user? Early in the process, the sound designer Nico Espinoza developed a reference for the sound experience. (Paul Jebanasam - Continuum 2015) This immersive and graphic digital workplace noise is at the center of the experience. »The noise becomes the information,« Nico said. This is how we are making sense of the processing of the AFM signal together. Vibration motors integrated in the garment pick up signals from the virtual realm, turning the wearable object into a hybrid membrane, offering a full-body sensorial experience. Their bodies enter in vibration, in resonance through the sounding process. This corporeal imprint of the vibrating cells created in VR persists even after the garment is taken off. Can such contact with other sensorial worlds also change our experience and actions in the macroscopic sphere? The visitors dove through the virtual haptic microscopy interaction, bringing back impressions from a world that taught us much as we were crafting it.

Outlook

The collaboration experienced through the making process of the »Virtual Sensing Knife and Haptic Hanbok« was a delight, but it also made us think of a new way to produce these experiments and knowledge and to share them with others. In the last few months of the exhibition and afterward, we established a platform around this practice of »staging more-than-human« perceptions by founding an emerging learning community, the »stretching senses schoo«. We invited Berlin based young members of the digital art scene to respond to a call for participation, hiring mentors over our newly consolidated networks. Three additional VR experiences were created through this curation process, in response to various aspects of the exhibition, creating more opportunities to »stretch the senses« of the visitors. Following the closing event of the first phase of the stretching senses school, several members of the collective were invited by the project »InKüLe« at UdK Berlin to teach in the format of the school. We keep the collective in shape, sharing regular news, as we further explore this experimental manner of practicing multimodal anthropology.