Media Technologies and Epistemologies: The Platforming of Everything| Haptic Holograms: The Liminal Communication of Emerging Visio-Haptic Apparatuses

Abstract

This article interrogates the development of two technologies that have started to converge—midair haptics and holograms—and theorizes that their combination disrupts notions of visuality, touch, and communication. Drawing from three articulations of haptics and Vilém Flusser’s philosophical concept of the “technical image,” we argue that three-dimensional rematerializing does not mean turning a representation “back” into its object but rather into a different kind of representation. Just as viewing a digital image means viewing a computed abstraction, so does touching what these systems calculate and produce as a surface. The resulting new experiences are of something other than a hologram or even an image—they are unique liminal spaces for the production and experience of new cultural objects, ways of knowing, and modes of communication.