Texture Matters: The Optical and the Haptical in Media

Principal investigators: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Klemens Gruber, Univ.-Prof. Antonia Lant, Ph.D.
Project team members: Jana Herwig, M.A., Mag. Alexandra Seibel, M.A., Ph.D., MMag. Fabian Ziegler
Duration: 01.05.2011–31.07.2014
Funding: FWF / Translational-Research-Programm
Granted sum: EUR 358.187,15

Texture Matters researches the long and varied careers of these twinned ideas (in the work of Alois Riegl, Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, the Bauhaus Foundation course, and Vladimir Tatlin, among others), and evaluates their continued importance, offering an archaeology for our current fascination with media touch sensations.  We organize the research into two strands: the historiography and genealogy of the haptical/optical pathway; and an investigation of key historical manifestations of texture understood as an integral part of media production, including the tactile cinema auditorium, film’s textures in motion, and touch at the interface of new media.  Via these vectors of research, the project illuminates how the two terms – haptical and optical – grew from their beginnings as visual-cultural categories, primarily tied to quotidian design, architecture, sculpture, and painting, into evoking our very own new media environment.

Homepage: http://texturematters.univie.ac.at/home/