Sharing stories through touch
Touch Aesthetics Fellow Olivia Ting's previous "Song Without Words" project included a vintage radio that emitted haptic vibrations. Photo by Will Tee Yang
What if storytelling could be felt — not just seen or heard?
Arizona State University’s Haptics for Inclusion Lab, part of the Narrative and Emerging Media programThe Narrative and Emerging Media program is a joint program between The Sidney Poitier New American Film School in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication., has partnered with ASU-Leonardo'sThe ASU-Leonardo initiative is a partnership between Leonardo/the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) and ASU, including the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the School for the Future of Innovation and Society. ASU-Leonardo drives innovation at the intersection of arts, sciences and technology. CripTech Incubator to launch the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship — a three-month initiative centered on storytelling through touch.
Based at the ASU California Center in Los Angeles, the fellowship supports designers and artists with disabilities in exploring how wearable haptic technologies can reshape narrative experiences and expand accessibility in the arts.
Over the course of the fellowship, four fellows have used tactile vests, gloves and actuators to create work that challenges conventional ideas of immersion and access. Their explorations draw from lived experience and creative research at the intersections of disability culture, technology and design.
Nadine Naidoo, the mother of a son with cerebral palsy and a student in the Narrative and Emerging Media program, said she was excited about the work happening through the fellowship after attending a kickoff event.
“When we met Vanessa Chang (director of programs at Leonardo/the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology) and the inspiring awardees of the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship lab at ASU, it was officially my son's first time in a haptics vest and haptics glove,” she said.
“For a child like my son, whose hands don't move as fast as his mind does because the spasticity affects certain fine motor skills, having a haptics glove in a chemistry lab would level the playing field, or enable him to conduct the same experiment at the same pace in VR as his peers performing (in real life). And that's just one example.”
Meet the fellows
Among the fellows is Olivia Ting, a hard-of-hearing visual artist and designer who transforms auditory concepts into visual and tactile expressions. Her work translates sound into touch and image, offering an alternative sensory pathway for communication.
Vanessa Hernández Cruz, a Chicana disabled dance artist and activist, merges performance and disability futurism through an aesthetic she describes as techno-desire. Using projections and VR, her work explores consent, embodiment and speculative intimacy.
Selwa Sweidan, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, collaborates with Cruz to explore haptic desiring — a concept that reframes touch as a site of connection, consent and creative access. Their co-created work pushes back against traditional assumptions of what immersive media can and should be.
Antonella Mazzoni, an arts scientist and immersive experience designer, creates cross-sensory media for people with sensory processing barriers. Her research blends wearable design with emotional narrative arcs to offer a more accessible form of cinematic expression.
“Touch is the first sense we develop as humans, and it's also the most inclusive and at the base of many experiences throughout our lives,” Mazzoni said. “How can it be then that touch experiences are not yet an integral part of storytelling? Despite the increase of haptics in digital entertainment, their use is limited to the same applications. Through this fellowship, I'm proposing new ways to use haptics as an inclusive storytelling technique."
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Olivia Ting is a hard-of-hearing visual artist and designer who transforms auditory concepts into visual and tactile expressions. Her work translates sound into touch and image, offering an alternative sensory pathway for communication.
Photo courtesy of Olivia Ting
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Vanessa Hernández Cruz, a Chicana disabled dance artist and activist, merges performance and disability futurism through an aesthetic she describes as techno-desire. Using projections and VR, her work explores consent, embodiment and speculative intimacy.
Photo by Whitney Browne
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Selwa Sweidan, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, collaborates with Cruz to explore haptic desiring — a concept that reframes touch as a site of connection, consent and creative access. Their co-created work pushes back against traditional assumptions of what immersive media can and should be.
Photo courtesy of Sweidan
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Antonella Mazzoni, an arts scientist and immersive experience designer, creates cross-sensory media for people with sensory processing barriers. Her research blends wearable design with emotional narrative arcs to offer a more accessible form of cinematic expression.
Photo courtesy of Mazzoni
Touching new narratives: Public invited to May 10 event
The public is invited to experience the culmination of this work at the Touch Aesthetics Closing Activation in Los Angeles on May 10. Hosted at the Pieter Performance Space, the event will feature multisensory installations, performances and community dialogue designed to engage both body and imagination. The showcase invites audiences into a new, inclusive way of perceiving story.
Important event details
The Closing Activation event will offer ASL interpretation on request, AI captioning and wheelchair access via elevator. (Note: The building does not have automated doors.) Free KN95 masks, rapid COVID-19 tests and hand sanitizer will be available. Organizers encourage masking and testing to protect vulnerable community members.
The Touch Aesthetics Fellowship is part of a larger vision to advance inclusive innovation through community-embedded, use-inspired research — a reflection of ASU’s design aspirations to transform society and fuse intellectual disciplines.
It is also a call to artists, educators and technologists to center disability not as a limitation, but as a source of imagination and design leadership.
“Integrating touch and haptics into storytelling not only expands the audiences it can reach, but the stories that can be told,” Chang said
To explore the fellows’ work or to RSVP for the showcase, visit the official fellowship page.
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