Cutaneous Grooves: Composing for the Sense of Touch

This paper presents a novel coupling of haptics technology and music, introducing the notion of tactile composition or aesthetic composition for the sense of touch. A system that facilitates the composition and perception of intricate, musically structured spatio-temporal patterns of vibration on the surface of the body is described. An initial test of the system in a performance context is discussed. The fundamental building blocks of a compositional language for touch are considered.