O corpo re-tocado: a emergência do tato nas novas tecnologias digitais

Abstract

The modus operandi from the west, which has always been leveled by technical aspects, has exerted great influence in our way of perceiving the world for a very long time. This work approaches the amplification of touching in a society of recent audiovisual tradition, where touching is being gradually "incorporated" to people's daily lives through gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, Kinect etc. This reconfiguration of touching, which goes beyond skin contact, but translates as the relationship of all senses, has demanded as much the calibration of the senses as the learning of how to operate them. Digital perception, which arises from the handling of such gadgets, has been shaping and broadening our kinaesthetic experiences by the act of touching as a decisive sense in the communication processes. This work considers how the new midia - which has generated a whole new concept of body language - has made us aware of the trait of imersion that the haptic technologies provide. The analysis exemplify both the kinaesthetic changes which give us the impression of reconnecting to our bodies, and the difficulty that involves the real "contact" of touching that is being overcome by the use of gadgets. This theoretical perspective was built from a set of ideas provided by some authors such as Merleau-Ponty, Vilém Flusser, Marshall McLuhan, Christoph Türcke, David Le Breton, Sérgio Basbaum, Lúcia Santaella, Constance Classen, Christine Greiner and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, among others. The case studies were considered from the connection they establish with the theoretical repertoire and also with the influence of the market and the cinema