The aim of my study is to explore the sense of touch and find a method of translating it into an audio-visual language for film, as a way of expanding the expressive register of the moving image, involving the sense of touch to counteract the medium’s tendency to alienate the body: “…the spectator at a movie felt physically detached from the world that cavorted and raced so extravagantly in front of them” (Constance Classen, The Book of Touch, Berg, 2005). This argument is further relevant and timely because of the rapid expansion of digital media, which weakens further the connection between ‘reality’ and its ‘representation’: “theoretically, the semiotic foundation of photographic images in the real world is thought to be destroyed in digital media” (Laura Marks, from Touch, Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

Film and touch have much in common because they both depend directly on movement, which unfolds in time. The moving image, both as a medium of artistic expression and a powerful tool of communication, could gain much if it became more fully informed by the unique qualities of tactile perception and the unconscious material hidden within the tactile memory of each individual.

The primary goal of my research is to investigate the conscious and unconscious, subjective and objective associations evoked by touch, formalising the results of my investigation into a ‘language of touch’ and translating this into a personal lexicon of expression available to the makers of the moving image. This part of my research will exist as an independent outcome in multiple forms (text, photography, perhaps installation and sound). This defined language of touch will then be used towards the secondary goal, with direct application to my own moving image work.

These are the core research questions I propose:

• What are the unique qualities of the sense of touch and how do they affect our perception of the surrounding world, both directly and indirectly through memory and association?
• How can touch as a sense be employed to awaken associative thinking and thus become an imaginative impulse in relation to film?
• To what extent is this subjective perception able to become objective?
• What are the significant shared traits in the relationship between film and touch?
• How can touch help us deepen the understanding and representation of reality on film?

In order to gather the necessary findings I will read widely, from texts dealing with touch in the context of philosophy, psychology, science, art and culture. I will watch and make close readings of moving image works in order to identify instances of the active involvement of the tactile. A great part of my research is a dialogue with tactile experts in their various fields, such as the sculptor Rosalyn Driscoll and neuroscientists Mark Lythgoe and Beau Lotto, among others. However, my primary dialogue will be with the filmmaker Jan Svankmajer. The work of the Czech surrealist artist is critical to any research involving the tactile and film. I will analyse the way he integrates and utilises the tactile in his work. (Svankmajer is one of the few artists currently working who has made investigation and expression of the tactile and its implication an explicit and essential part of his aesthetic project.) This will involve close reading and analysis of his written theoretical texts and the tactile element of his films, as well as the study of his purely tactile art, including objects and fetishes, gestic sculptures and various other forms.

Practical experiments, and especially the creative process by which they are conducted (mirroring the procedure of encounter with the moving image) also form a necessary part of my methodology. These will include personal investigation and experiments with different subject groups.

This research will aim to identify a more precise way of conveying and communicating ‘tactile’ impressions and the associations connected to these sensations, through the medium of film. It will help to involve the whole body, resulting in a more enhanced sensual experience when viewing the moving image, which would, one hopes, be of value both to other filmmakers and the audience in general.