Publication alert: Haptic holograms!

Longtime colleague Jason Archer at Michigan Technological University and I have been thinking about haptic holograms for a while — and our first critique of such interactions is now published in a special section of the International Journal of Communication. Our paper, “Haptic Holograms: The Liminal Communication of Emerging Visio-haptic Apparatuses,” considers how two technologies — digital holograms, which attempt to manifest 3D object imagery, and haptic technologies, which attempt to create sensations of touch — have converged recently within several prototype systems designed to create and project touchable holograms.

We first survey the theoretical history of both fields, and then we chase the merging of them into three separate haptic-hologram projects around the world. Spoiler alert: we conclude that

What is felt is not the image but an expanded part of the technical apparatus: Air, sonic vibrations, lasers. This liminality of the encounter creates an interesting new space to produce new cultural objects and sensations. To emphasize this point, in a moment of marketing hype, the product manager for UltraHaptics, Charlie Alexander, said that midair haptics “allows you to create different sensations like the sensation of lightning or magic” (Arrow.com, 2018, 1:40). We do not know what lightning or magic feel like (hopefully not a “hand dryer”), but coupled with visual and textual discourse, it is possible that systems like these could determine what these things are meant to feel like (as defined by the designers). Step aside, poet — research and development is bringing touch to the untouchable!

Please enjoy the article, send any questions or comments, and watch for our future work in this collaboration — including an upcoming conference in which we hope to start laying out a theory of the “technical material”!