Virtual Touch
Phantom Perception

1999

This installation's user interface may look plain and simple, but its astounding features are brought out by touching "Virtual Touch".

With the index finger and a "thimble," a point in three-dimensional space can be moved on the monitor screen. If you maneuver the point within a rectangular figure and attempt to lift it up, you experiences a small miracle—the thimble-mouse encounters palpable resistance. "Tactile feedback" is the technical term used to characterize the process whereby virtual objects take on physical properties.

Tactile feedback technology has still not reached a very advanced state of development, but the areas in which this sort of materialized virtual reality will be implemented in the future have already emerged: computer systems for visually impaired individuals, the remote control of robots in industry and space exploration, and, above all, in telesurgery, the field in which the first prototypes were developed.