“The brain does not live inside the head, even though it is
its formal habitat. It reaches out to the body, and with the body reaches out
to the world… brain is hand and hand is brain.”
This quote from Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Thinking Hand describes the human connection to the environment
and surrounding through the touch of the hand. The sense of touch is a powerful
instrument; the human brain is stimulated by the textures, temperatures, and
simple feel of the world around it, and in turn the world around a person can –
through touch – affect a person’s thoughts, perceptions, and memories.
In our society today, the hand-held device has become the
world in which we are involved; although it is a powerful tool, it sometimes
serves as a distraction from the physical world around us. By using the phone
as a tool to record and map the things our hands encounter in our environment,
we can reconnect to our surroundings and become more aware of the haptic effect
it has on our consciousness and psyche.
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