In an age of connectability, when streams of images are intertwined with an overflow of textual data, we find ourselves touching screens more and more often. New sets of relations between the body and the image/ word are being conjured parallel to changes brought to the act of reading by technological advent. Vision has already been conceived in analogy to the sense of touch (see Jonathan Crary's manuscript on visuality in the 18th and 19th centuries), furthermore, I argue, another dramatic shift is taking place these days in the bind between text and image. My lecture will problematize conceptions of the human body and the act of reading. Drawing on Johanna Drucker, I shall analyze possible structures of "electronic spaces” (e-space), attempting to facilitate an "interpretative activity" that goes beyond vision. Using examples from literature, visual art and technology I shall demonstrate the ways in which reading is becoming increasingly synesthetic

1. Between Page and Screen –
Synesthetic Reading?Between Page and Screen:
Is Online Reading Becoming
Synesthetic?
Dr. Romi Mikulinsky,
Synesthesia in the Arts, Humanities and
(Neuro)Sciences
ArtLab Berlin, July 2013

2. The Convergence of
the Senses
“The verb to touch
means first a blind
contact, in the hope of
finding something by
chance: a heuristic
method” (Vilém Flusser,
Into the Universe of
Technical Images 24-5).
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3. I. Alternate Forms of Reading
“Image-making mechanisms were invented, namely, to
produce improbable, informative situations to
consolidate invisible possibilities into visible
improbabilities” (Flusser 18)

4. I. Alternate Forms of Reading - Quipus

5. I. Alternate Forms of Reading - Quipus
q

6. “The End of Books”
Octave Uzanne
1895
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I. Alternate Forms of Reading - Audio

7. I. Alternate Forms of Reading - Haptic
Seeing/ Touching/
Light-writing (photography)
László Moholy-Nagy
Photogram
1926

8. I. Alternate Forms of Reading - Haptic
“This analogy interpreting sensory data from one modality
(touch) in terms of another (vision) was to be pervasive,
informing successive philosophical debates and thought
experiments throughout the Enlightenment.”
(Mark Paterson, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and
Technologies, 8)

9. I. Alternate Forms of Reading - Haptic
sensory perception
* cross-modal/ inter-modal- sensory information being
transferable from touch to vision
* amodal - sensory information being prior to
processing as specifically audile, visual, tactile, etc.
(Paterson 38-9).

10. II. Reading in the Age of the Touch Screen
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11. II. Reading in the Age of the Touch Screen

12. II. Reading in the Age of the Touch Screen
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13. II. Reading in the Age of the Touch Screen
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14. -
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III. Haptic Reading - Man-Machine Interface

15. III. Haptic Reading - Man-Machine Interface
Wearable Computing

16. III. Haptic Reading - Man-Machine Interface
Wearable Computing
The body becomes the screen

17. III. Haptic Reading - Man-Machine Interface
Haptic Braille
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18. III. Haptic Reading - Man-Machine Interface
Senseg
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“Feel” texture on glass by manipulating electrical force between finger and screen

19. IV. Reading Beyond the Screen - Spatiality
AR – Augmented Reality Apps

20. IV. Reading Beyond the Screen - Spatiality
From Page to Screen – 3D Poetry
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21. IV. Reading Beyond the Screen - Spatiality
Kinect
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22. IV. Reading Beyond the Screen - Spatiality
Kinect
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23. The End
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