Traditional tactility is caused by or consists of contact. It is the state of being derived from or caused by touch. A state in which one is in contact with some other element or object. In the digital environment of the web, what is most dominant is the lack of such contact or touch. We may touch our keyboard and/or mouse but the network of the web and the images on it are at a remove from our sense of touch. We are, at a base level, prohibited from touch based interaction in this environment by the surface of the CRT. Additionally, the dominance of the visual and aural in the digital environment tends to subordinate, or even seemingly nullify the possibility for other sense based experiences.
The potentiality of tactile experience remains in the digital environment. It has, however, shifted from direct contact to spatial and numerical coordinates. We feel in this space not through
direct contact but by extending our sense of contact and our hands through the mouse. The mouse allows not only to point and click but to touch and feel. Not as an extension of our eyes, but of our skin - we can feel, or trace, the images projected on our screens.
The images in this site have been maximized for such a type of digital contact. All the images have been visually dissipated leaving only their trace forms, or edges, and resultant interior surface dimensions. This site does not offer images to see but images to feel. To experience an image in this manner nothing is visible other than the cursor as the point of contact and a set of two numbers for the X and Y coordinate location of the mouse. By moving the cursor across the image space you can feel the image trace. In this way one gains a new type of experience; a new tactility, primary to the digital space of the web.
