Huidhonger

With this background we decided to focus on a specific act of skin contact: holding someone’s hand. In essence, the goal was to recreate the feeling of holding someone’s hand through a combination of shape and texture, and this was the starting point of the whole process. The choice of materials, shape and aesthetic were inspired by the aim of achieving the right feeling that resembles the texture of human skin. We were also inspired by interesting textures that made you want to touch them, without really knowing why, since this could be connected to the feeling of wanting to have skin contact with someone. We were inspired by the balance of creating a prototype that felt realistic but maybe did not look or move realistically since this can affect the appeal to the person interacting with it [4]. 

Huidhonger was created by designing a 3D-printed base in Blender. The model was then covered in a variety of different materials that reminded us of skin. The material included silicone pieces, makeup sponges and pieces of a dish glove. When putting all of this together, we let inspiration guide us and tried to layer and combine the materials in different ways until we found a combination that we liked and ended up with our final creature. 

The work is meant to make you think about what the essence of skin-to-skin contact is, and evoke questions like: Can we artificially create the feeling of human skin and evoke feelings of intimacy through skin contact? Does something have to look human to create that feeling? Or is texture enough to achieve this?

By presenting our creature to the audience with little explanation other than a note with the title and the sub-title, “Please hold me”, we also wanted to discover how people would react and interact with it, and what kind of bond they would create with the creature. Writing “Please hold me” instead of “You can touch it” was an intentional decision to give the impression that the creature had its own wants and needs, and to make sure that we (as its creators) didn’t get in the way of peoples’ bonding experience with it. It was important for us to let the audience create their own interpretation of our work.

During the exhibition, we received responses ranging from disgust to (morbid) enthusiasm. Some visitors needed a little encouragement and explanation to hold our creature whereas others reached right for it. As we intended, the alien-looking base and creature evoked curiosity as to what they would feel like. The visitors could also experience touching the creature using a blindfold, and they reported that not looking at the creature while handling it enabled them to focus more on the texture and shape. 

We asked people that interacted with our creature what they thought the texture of the hand resembled. Some of the descriptions and associations they made:

• "It feels like fake skin"

• "Chicken bone"

• "Jellyfish" 

• "Octopus"

• "A sensory Uncanny Valley" 

• "An alien horror thing"

• "Kind of like fake teeth"

• "Very scary"

• "Awww"

• "Sweaty"

• "It feels like it's trying to be skin but that's the problem"

• "I am feeling so many things at once" 

• "The palm has a human touch to it but the back of the hand feels fabricated"

• "It's just a piece of flesh"

Something that was missing from the experience according to many was radiation of warmth. It might also be more immersive if the entire creature was covered in silicone, rather than just the palm. This could be included in potential future iterations to make the creature feel more like 'alive' human touch.   

Sources

[1] Morrison, I. (2016) Keep Calm and Cuddle on: Social Touch as a Stress Buffer. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0052-x

[2] Heatley Tejada A., Dunbar R. I. M., Montero M.. (2020) Physical Contact and Loneliness: Being Touched Reduces Perceptions of Loneliness. Adapt Human Behav Physiol. DOI: 10.1007/s40750-020-00138-0 

[3] Debrot, A. , Schoebi, D. , Perrez, M. , Horn, A. B.. (2013) Touch as an Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Process in Couples’ Daily Lives: The Mediating Role of Psychological Intimacy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167213497592

[4] Cabibihan. J.J, Dario. P, Pattofatto. S, Jomâa. M. (2007) The Uncanny Valley and the Search for Human Skin-Like Materials for a Prosthetic Fingertip. IEEE Xplore. DOI: 10.1109/ICHR.2006.321315