Abstract

A ‘scan’ is a close examination, a slow and repeated sweep of the eye and also the hasty glance of a quick skim. These actions are markedly different, but they all perform the same function: an eye is searching for something. The slow careful focus that absorbs every detail, the staccato pan across a horizon and the bounce of an eyeball as it skips across words on a page are all forms of reading the surface of the visible. Slow, sideways or barely there, behind each method of observation is the one purpose: detection. For the scanner who reads the perceptible world, meaning accumulates with each shift of the gaze. Thought and vision are here combined. It is a close-up form of vision that takes us into the realm of haptic aesthetics. But what happens when we try and see surface? The distance between the thing that sees - whether it is an imaging machine or the seeing eye - collapses. There is no space between the look and the thing. It is all there, on the surface. Nothing is hidden, everything is given away. This practice-led presentation focuses on scanning, touch and an attraction to surfaces, from the interface of the screen to the painted gesture, offering a haptic approach to thinking about digital aesthetics.