The Hedgehog Dilemma
" One cold winter’s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
The pandemic has limited physical interaction since 2019. To lower the rates of dissemination of the virus, governments have resorted to isolation, stay home. We interact with the world around us through our hands, they are the portal that connects the outside world to the inside, leading them to be assigned the role of the villain amidst COVID-19. The pandemic has sentenced our own hands to solitary confinement for the crime of touch. After months physically being by ourselves one cannot help but wonder how will our recovery from the isolation going to be. Will we learn that we miss touch? Or will we learn that we can live without it?
Synthetic Touch is an object crafted in crochet. The apparatus wraps around the chest and leaves one of the hands hanging in the back, making the hand numb, providing people with the possibility to feel the presence of another, whilst being by themselves. How long will it last, how strong will it be and what will it touch, people have full control of the extent of that interaction. During isolation, Synthetic Touch is able to somewhat please our yearning for touch, without putting at risk the health of others.
Returning to the Hedgehog Dilemma, Synthetic Touch creates an alternative for people to find the warmth, within themselves, while touching. Perhaps adding physicality to our fantasies, or a layer of tacticity to digital relationships. Preserving limits of the self and feelings of safety and control, while not being affected by the frictions that come from being around others.
