HAPTICA

The HAPTICA project is about haptics, design and culinary experiences and aims to increase knowledge in the fields of taste and smell through haptic experiences, and to initiate a debate on artistic research on the role of haptics in the aesthetic design of meals.

Haptics comes from the Greek haptomai, which means to touch. The word is also synonymous with an active sense of feeling and sensory experiences such as touching, grasping and examining things and feeling events in our environment. Haptic experiences are necessary in our everyday life and complement all other senses to fully perceive the situation.

Many different academic disciplines and professions already work in the field of haptics, and HAPTICA will develop this knowledge through artistic research. For example, the project will include investigations into how aesthetic methods and concepts from design can be applied in creative cooking and table setting, and how a sculptor's haptic experience with the hand translates into a sommelier's 'inner haptic grasp' of smell and taste.

Haptics affects us every hour of the day and is therefore important to learn more about. It involves feeling the floor under your feet, the pressure of your fingers on the keys and the grip of your hand on the corkscrew. The relevance of the research project to the artistic field is about how designers, sculptors and culinary artists use the body's ability to sense and feel - haptics is the central research tool.

The research project HAPTICA is a collaboration between Konstfack through Cheryl Akner-Koler, Professor of Industrial Design, and the School of Hospitality Management in Grythyttan, Örebro University through Mischa Billing, Senior Lecturer, Åsa Öström, Professor, Annika Göran-Rodell, Lecturer, Tobias Nygren, Senior Lecturer, and Lars Eriksson, PhD student, all within the subject of Meal Science and Hospitality.