I REMEMBER TOUCH: The Path to Physical Interaction in the Face of Rabid Hygienicism

0 | ABSTRACT

Walk into any grocery store in early 2020 and you are confronted with hoards of masked, latex-gloved individuals clearing shelves of bleach and hand sanitizer, fighting each other over jumbo packages of toilet paper, and disgruntledly exchanging the phrase “6 feet” with each other. Somewhere along the line, in the name of hygienicism, we have sought to add as many protective layers as possible between ourselves and our shared spaces and those we share it with. While mitigating viral transmission is necessary, the sense of touch, crucial to our understanding of and interaction with these spaces, is being stifled and repressed, moist, clammy, and desensitized behind the veil of a latex glove. I Remember Touch is a kit solution that integrates flexible, implanted, antiseptic “organs” filled with disinfectant fluid into the exterior facing of an existing garment, connected to a hose that runs the length of the sleeve to the wrist where the wearer can use the nozzle and small in-line bulb-pump to disinfect surfaces. The “organs”, which are RF-welded medical-grade rubber bladders, are sewn onto the garment at home using the flange on each bladder, with the number of bladder units variable depending on the height of the user and size of their garment.

I Remember Touch is designed to redefine the “personal bubble” in the pandemic era. In public space people, counter to their habits and instincts, are becoming wary of touching or interacting with their physical environment, I Remember Touch is an externalized bodily adaptation that hijacks our common habit of touch, creating a sanitary layer between the user and their public environment, without obfuscating or distorting their and their fellow citizen’s perception of the space and those who occupy it. I Remember Touch attempts to meet key safety requirements that appear to be indefinite until the potential of a vaccine is realized, possibly years in the future, while crucially maintaining the important sense of touch, before it falls to an increasingly long list of human senses that are being removed from direct interaction with shared space.

1 | Setting The Scene

WHO:

I Remember Touch is for anyone, a potentially ubiquitous kit solution to integrate safe interaction of shared spaces.

WHAT:

I Remember Touch is a garmented-augmenting system that implants antiseptic “organs” on the surface of the subject’s clothing, connected to a tube routed through the sleeve to the wrist, where the user can seamlessly disinfect objects and surfaces immediately before their hands come into contact with them.

WHERE:

I Remember Touch is designed to redefine the “personal bubble” in the pandemic era. In public space, counter to their habits and instincts, people are wary of touching or interacting with their physical environment, I Remember Touch is an externalized bodily adaptation that hijacks our common desire to touch, creating a sanitary layer between the subject and their public environment, without obfuscating or distorting their and their fellow citizen’s perception of the space and those who occupy it. In a time of increasing layers of removal between fellow inhabitants of public space, from physical inhibitors like masks, to indicative ones like the use of the smartphone as a social isolator, I Remember Touch attempts to hybridize safety and the important sense of touch, instead of letting the newly-minted covid world reify the increasingly long list of human senses that are being removed from direct interaction with shared space.

WHEN:

I Remember Touch is for the present, indefinite moment. The end of the coronavirus era is a vague, indistinct time, not a specific date. Even in the event of a vaccine, full administration of such a solution would still take time. People already crave to again inhabit public spaces around others, and I Remember Touch seeks to institute a layer of necessary safety that is as minimally hindering as possible, while preserving the important place that uninhibited touch occupies in our understanding of space.

HOW:

Using a system of disinfectant filled, flexible bladders and a routing hose through the garment to the wrist, I Remember Touch embeds a disinfecting system into an existing garment, without compromising the motion and characteristics of the worn item. The bladders, constructed from medical-grade clear rubber, RF welded into the tessellated structure, provides flexibility and keeps the fluid properly distributed. The hose, connected at the bottom of the bladder system, runs around the sleeve to the wrist, where a nozzle and small in-line bulb-pump allow the user to easily spray surfaces and then stow the pump module in the sleeve of the garment.

2 | Individual Adaptation

The first step in my process was to look at how individuals have been responding in specific instances to the current health crisis. As opposed to focusing on the bureaucratic advisories that have been vague, fluctuating, and at times misleading, I chose to take individuals’ natural responses as my point of departure. After analyzing a number of intimate stories about individual adaptations of everyday life, one that struck me as intriguing was an account from a New York Times article of a man in NYC carrying a bottle of 30-to-1 water-bleach and spraying everything he touched in advance. The particular way that this individual was integrating safety measures into their day caught me as interesting because it reflects the most intricate problem at the intersection of public space and public health: how do we maintain safety during a pandemic without erecting impermeable barriers of protection between persons, forcing them away from the physical social landscape and into a bizarre, hamstrung virtual one? In an effort to revitalize public space safely during the coronavirus era, the concept of personal space must be approached from a definition by action, not by barrier. I Remember Touch creates a safe space that the person exists in, but is not confined to, providing a space of protection that is not as jarring as a solid barrier.

2 | The Necessity for Public Space in the Coronavirus Era

To begin, in addition to endemic problems around public space that existed before coronavirus, the public health crisis has exacerbated the already-widening fissures in shared spaces. The coronavirus era is not defined by a curatorial attitude towards public space, limiting access to a selection of the population, excluding minority groups, it is completely eradicating public space as a concept. In a universal absence of public spaces, society has been pushed onto the internet nearly entirely. The social landscape has contorted itself to fit the capabilities of the virtual environment, losing much of its vitality in the process. As we see the ineffectiveness of hashtag activism and a general flattening of complex human interaction onto the digital plane, lacking texture or topography, the concept of public sphere as described by Rosalyn Deutsche begins to break down. Transforming public discourse from the multi-faceted physical environment into a digital reality forces a loss of resolution that renders the virtual public sphere as a mere shade of the real thing. The public sphere, despite all of it’s problematic aspects in the contemporary-past, is currently encountering a full conversion to a platform on which it cannot fully serve its purpose in any meaningful capacity. Deutsche argues that the public sphere is being infringed upon already by an society’s exclusionary inclination towards minority and undesirable groups like the homeless, giving way to limited access for some groups, but the reality of the coronavirus era is much worse. Deutsche’s point is certainly problematic for the public sphere, but the inability for anyone at all to connect within a shared space threatens the very foundation of a democratic public discourse. Take one look at a video-conferencing meeting of more than twenty-five people or more and it becomes painfully clear how inhibited real discussion is today. Digital space is simply inadequate for the types of complex interactions, both intentional and in passing, that exist in a physical public space, providing for the possibility of a real public sphere where diverse groups can encounter each other.

One issue that lies at the heart of the digital public space is the prediction of each interaction on a conscious decision by the individual. All of the unintended, unforeseen interactions of day to day life in shared spaces are suddenly omitted, preventing the organic encounters that enable the public discourse to grow and evolve, instead of becoming insular and siloed within the echo-chambers of the selected digital spaces. In many ways, the individual does not have total control over their path through a physical public space. There are so many potentials for overlap and collision of lives, ideas, and values that evolve within the public sphere, but are not replicated in a virtual equivalent that puts far more control in the hands of the user.

Michael Sorkin addresses this concept in his Variations on a Theme Park, exploring the organic growth of a city. As Sorkin discusses how the suburbs are an artificial versioning of the natural structure of the city, digital public spaces are that to the physical spaces where actual fluid interaction occurs. The beauty of the public sphere, the shared spaces of the city, is that they are unpredictable and erratic, thrusting otherwise separate groups together to confront a reality different from their own, contrary to the algorithmic feeds and identity politics of the internet social landscape.

In Miwon Kwon’s One Place After Another, she suggests that museums have been supplanted by public space, but in reality, public space doesn’t effectively exist today. Kwon is right, the studio and the Museum have been overshadowed, but not by public space, by virtual space. As museum exhibits move onto Minecraft and the ability for people to experience artwork in a public setting evaporates, the digital realm overtakes both the institution of the museum and the public space.

For these reasons, finding ways to re-enter public space is more important than ever in order to revive the democratic public sphere. The recent past has seen many issues posed for effective democratic public space, but the public health crisis has suddenly and rapidly supplanted the entirety of public space with a digital version that lacks the dynamic range to fully represent it.

3 | Effectively Providing for the Reinstatement of Public Space

Now that we understand why re-entry to physical public space is important, we must consider how to safely provide for the means of revitalization. My concept, I Remember Touch, takes on the cultural notion that protective barriers must be solid and have strong physicality. Throughout our society, protection is represented as a shield, a wall. These types of physical barriers only further the isolation that we all already feel, and hinder the ability for human connection. Proper safety equipment is obviously necessary, but I Remember Touch seeks to explore how that equipment can create an immaterial barrier that designates and protects space with physically partitioning it. Humans are physical beings, and the desire to construct impermeable barriers stems from that instinct, but it is also what enables us to relate to others and allows for public spaces to become the sites of meaningful and democratic interaction. I Remember Touch by giving the wearer an integrated system by which to disinfect the objects that enter their personal space, provides a safe bubble around the wearer without literally creating a sphere around them. I Remember Touch allows for the outside world to enter, allows the wearer to engage the larger space around them in a public context, but safely on their own terms.

4 | The End Is (Not) In Sight

The end of the corona era is elusive and uncertain. Many models predict that there will be recurring waves of the virus as outbreaks spread and come under containment. The end of this pandemic may be its own time period as a whole, defined by false-starts and patchwork social distancing. All that can be sure is that the exact conclusion of the pandemic is indefinite, which is why I Remember Touch is designed to be adaptive to the fluid continuum from the coronavirus to post-coronavirus periods. The structure of the garment is somewhat understated, but with certain clear aesthetic nods to its function, transforming as the wearer utilizes the disinfectant system. The vessels of fluid are connected and accessed from the bottom, meaning that as the system is used, the pods empty from top to bottom until they lie flat, seamlessly integrating into a post-covid period when the system is no longer necessary. The pods, with inspiration from biomorphic forms act as adapted externalized organs, an evolutionary apparatus that augments the wearer’s relationship to their surrounding space.

In terms of the spaces themselves, the coronavirus period is marked by an indiscriminate realization of isolation that cuts across class, race, and socioeconomic lines and the post-corona era will be one where many realize the value of widespread social interaction. As public spaces reopen with recently unseen energy, the social isolation that is being felt across the world will not benefit the current structure of public space, but rather wake up those who have felt it adequate, showing them what life is like without the interactions that they previously took for granted, or even actively disliked. Humans are social beings and the public sphere is the place where the majority of social life takes place. I Remember Touch is a malleable solution for the end of the pandemic, allowing for varying levels of protection and social signaling of protection. As the ambiguous end approaches, I Remember Touch seeks to be suitable to the changing and shifting magnitude of the crisis.