Touching: A Research Method in Art and Design
published by @kabklectoratedesign
2022
Contributions by: Mae Alderliesten, Petra Blaisse, Matas Buckus, Marie-Ilse Bourlanges, Cynthia Bruinsma, Benedetta Ciappini, Cynthia Hathaway, Dolores Hilhorst, Heidi Holmström, Erco Lai, Wiktoria Markiewicz, Renata Miron, Muireann Nic An Bheatha, Marcel Van Nispen, Lucia Ponard, Katie Pelikan, Laura Van Santen, Marcos Kueh Sheng Pang, Ludmila Souza Rodrigues, Giulietta Pastorino Verastegui
Designed by Niels Schrader
When we want to check the facts, to verify our ‘epistemic grip on reality’, as the philosopher Ophelia Deroy puts it, the sense for which we reach is touch. And while touch can certainly be used to elicit and ‘grip’ knowledge, it can also be used in a more tentative and probing modality — to feel our way toward truths that are both within and yet always beyond the grasp.
This publication contains interviews, research samples, recipes, quotations, and reflections on the research process by tutors, workshop instructors and students all across the KABK community. The range of materials and processes engaged with is diverse and the approaches are as unique as fingerprints, but a premise embedded in the DNA of material research is that experiments are shared. And so, whether your work is about addressing one of the urgent social issues of our day or pursuing one of the more enduring questions about the relationship between humans and the environment, we hope you will find in this book the inspiration, but also the ingredients, you need to recreate and adapt your own variant of material research.
Art direction: Niels Schrader
Editing: Alice Twemlow and Kiersten Thamm
Editorial assistance: Ada Popowicz
Printing: Drukkerij robstolk
Paper
Typefaces: Niels Schrader and Martijn de Heer
Publisher: Design Lectorate, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague