Hanif Baharin
Instructions to users:
This artwork is meant to be viewed on desktop computers. Turn on your sound. Choose any texture to interact with from the menu above. The texture may take some time to load, so please wait for a while if you do not see it. Hover your mouse over and click to start. You can zoom in and out using your mouse scroll button. You can also use your keyboard to zoom in and out - use the down arrow to zoom in and the up arrow to zoom out. Try to guess the material of each texture on the quiz page.
In this artwork, I explore how people may experience texture through digital representation on a screen by using zoom function and sound. This work allows users to zoom in on a photo of a material to see its texture up close, whilst listening to the sound the material made when scratched with a fingernail or a coin.
I was inspired to create this work by a user experience research I conducted on visitors of a 3D online virtual gallery. The virtual gallery contains 3D renderings of physical artworks. The participants of my research were not able to discern the texture of the 3D rendered artworks and wanted the ability to zoom in on the artworks to see the texture. From the research, I also found that the participants could not figure out the materials used in artworks through their photographs, and textual descriptions of the materials used are important for them to be able to know what the artworks were made of.
In this work, I do not name the materials used in the photos. You can try to guess the material in each photo from zooming in on its texture and listening to the sound.
I am a new media/physical computing artist and research fellow. My research interests are in Interaction Design, User Experience, Human-Computer Interaction and physical computing.
Email: hbaharin@ukm.edu.my