Haptic Engagement
There is no doubt that “haptic visuality” is necessarily different from “optical visuality,” but we run once more up against the complicated distinctions (or essential paradoxes) between self and other, subject and object that define haptic experience. Proximity negates object certainty, lapsing or progressing into dynamic subjectivity, yet proximity also assures, by way of sensory immediacy, the realness of the boundary between self and other. At the same time, proximity connotes not only a “feminine” sense of over-closeness and partiality, but also a means of thinking and of thereby knowing that overrides those very same presumed biases. Haptic visuality, of course, is evocative precisely for its multisensory valence, its conflation of depth and surface, sight and touch.
How might virtual reality extend or differ from a sense of haptic visuality in cinema? The parameters are variable and in need of definition. They change, for example, whether one is talking about narrative-driven media that more closely mimics the intentions of cinema. David Trotter has remarked on the notion of haptic narrative, arguing that the sense of surface germane to haptic visuality should not necessarily disavow narrative (In “Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher: Towards a Theory of Haptic Narrative”). Video games, in contrast, combine narrative, surface, depth, etc. in novel ways that push the boundaries of haptic experience.
Even more pertinently, does virtual reality adhere at all to the notion of haptic visuality because its immersive immanence—its immersion in depth—ineluctably negates the play of surface? Or, does the capability for actual haptic engagement render haptic visuality moot in favor of broader, more complexly interwoven forms of multisensory experience?