Abstract: In this short presentation I will discuss the use of video as a research tool to interrogate touch and digital touch. Specifically, I will attend to one of the 12 InTouch project case studies, Thresholds of Touch, to illustrate the different ways in which we used video. Thresholds was a two- year interdisciplinary collaboration between me, a social researcher, an artist/researcher, and sound composer/researcher. It led to a performance experiment scripted and choreographed to explore the reciprocity of physical touching with others, the self, the environment, and objects as a ‘tactile preparation chamber’ to sensitize and activate people to share and document their touch experiences. It culminated in a video using artistic embodied strategies to engage with and reflect on the participants experiences of Thresholds, layering, re-enactment, and live tracing of participants visual and written responses to Thresholds, and our spoken and written reflections to create an analytical dialogue with the performance.
Bio: Carey Jewitt is Professor of Technology and Interaction, and Chair of the UCL Collaborative Social Science Domain, University College London. Her research centres on digital interaction, multimodal communication, touch, methodological innovation, and interdisciplinary research. Carey is a founding co-editor of two Sage journals Multimodality & Society (2021) and Visual Communication (2000), and author of over 150 publications, including 10 books, most recently, Digital Touch (2024 Polity Press) with Sara Price. She has led large research projects including, InTouch, an European Research Council Consolidator Award (2016-2022).
