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‘Queer’ Objects: The Art Practice as a Tool for Shared Sensory Understanding
Author(s) -
Boulet Suzanne
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of art and design education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1476-8070
pISSN - 1476-8062
DOI - 10.1111/jade.12302
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , closeness , aesthetics , human–computer interaction , value (mathematics) , queer , sociology , psychology , visual arts , computer science , epistemology , art , artificial intelligence , mathematics , gender studies , mathematical analysis , philosophy , machine learning
This article is structured around three art objects I created and presented during the iJADE Conference in 2019. Through the description and manipulation of these tactile objects, which are designed in a way that allows for ease of interaction, we arrive at the concepts of familiarity and strangeness, attraction and repulsion that underpin encounters with the art object, the other and the environment. In this article we will rediscover the sense of touch as our singular access to the environment and a means of perceiving closeness. We will also examine experiments with students in an effort to understand how the art object can be significant through its affective value, and explore the concept of private and public boundaries in search of a suitable atmosphere for intimate encounters. Finally, we will ask how the art object functions as a tool that allows our distinct sensitivities to meet through a shared sensory experience, the answer to which may be found in the notions of ritual and games, in order to come to a definition of the ‘ethics of contact’.