Tactile Orchestra is a tactile textile experience that allows groups of people to tactically and collectively play symphonies. The music was performed by the Dutch string quartet Zapp4 and Norwegian music producer Jan Bang. The music is triggered when people stroke the fabric.

This installation features an interesting take on remote presence because it conflates different sensory inputs. The initial stroke takes advantage of the tactile nature of the furry textile, but also triggers the prerecorded sample of the musicians playing. This interaction creates a direct translation from one’s sense of touch to one’s sense of hearing. The ability to convert sensory inputs into unrelated sensory inputs is an intriguing proposition for telepresence. When I think about remote presence, I first picture the video call, a passive experience of watching a transmission of someone’s video and voice and then transmitting your own video and voice. This type of remote interaction is generally balanced. However, the idea of sensory conversion could create some biased remote interactions. What if the touching the fabric of the Tactile Orchestra did not trigger pre-recorded sounds, but instead affected a live performance of music? Extending the ideas of sensory conversion that this installation inherently proposes could radically change the impact of our remote interactions.