Reclaiming Our Senses in a Digital World
Reclaiming Our Senses in a Digital World
Shifting from high-tech to high-touch.
Overstimulated Senses, Simulated Sensations
We live in the age of sight and sound. "We have been obsessed with sight since the Enlightenment, which elevated our eyes while devaluing all our other senses," wrote Mark M. Smith in his Sensory History Manifesto. The ten hours we spend in front of screens daily only reinforce this visual dominance. Hearing, too, has become the second major sense of modernity, reflected in the 368 songs we consume on average each week.
But what about the other senses? Often overlooked, they are seen as too physical or less intellectual. Yet Silicon Valley’s ambition knows no bounds, with more and more devices being developed to simulate the senses that digital technology has yet to capture. We now have devices for smell, designed to diffuse scents, and for touch, including haptic vests, bracelets, sleeves, and gloves. As for taste, we're still a long way off, though a few attempts have emerged.
The quantified self, meanwhile, turns our sensations into data, measurable signals. We know the heart beats, but we no longer feel it. This is what Alain Damasio, a French writer of sci-fi and fantasy, calls the "raccorps" in La Vallée du Silicium (a fictional take on Silicon Valley). The term is a fusion of the French words "raccord" (connection) and "corps" (body), describing a body that is monitored and interfaced, yet detached from itself, reduced to a mere shell. In these Californian dreams, sensations are calibrated and triggered on demand, without the need to fully inhabit one's body. The connection between cause and effect dissolves, and reality fades in favor of simulation.
Re-engaging with reality
Faced with Silicon Valley’s encompassing drive to reduce reality to models and simulations, it is still possible to use digital tools to revive our attention to the musicality and sensoriality of the world.
Radio Garden, an interactive platform that allows users to explore radio stations from around the globe in real-time, exemplifies this approach. Rather than simply selecting a station through a standard interface, Radio Garden allows navigation through an interactive globe, where each point represents a local radio station broadcasting live. The experience invites users to "move" through the world's soundscape, listening to the sounds, music, and voices of distant cities and villages. This auditory contact with often ignored or unknown local realities reconnects us to a direct and living sensory dimension.
But sometimes, this approach goes a step further. American artist Rosy Lamb, along with the team at hérétique, recently unveiled the Cocolor app, a game that invites us to rethink our relationship with color. In traditional digital environments, RGB colors are governed by additive synthesis, while physical pigments blend through subtractive synthesis—a reality that our brains naturally comprehend better. Cocolor aims to bridge this disconnect by offering an experience of subtractive digital color creation, which is more intuitive and sensitive. By slowing down the creative process, Cocolor encourages us to question our perception of colors: Do we all see them the same way? Which shades resonate with us? What harmonies evoke emotion?
Giving Substance to the Digital
The omnipresence of screens and our ability to access the world remotely have, in turn, created a growing need for physicality—or even hyperphysicality. Some experiences are now addressing this by engaging our senses more directly, through touch and movement.
One approach is to take the digital out of the smooth, flat surfaces of our screens—which increasingly dominate our interaction with the world—and create new objects with specific uses and gestures. Ferdinand Barbier, for example, aims to achieve this with digital objects like the Music Box, a wooden case that holds a single sound. Spencer Chang follows a similar path with his ceramic pillow designed to “put our phones to sleep,” while Playtronica’s TouchMe composes sound from physical contact between two people. Dynamicland explores this concept further with its experimental interfaces. As John Naisbitt foresaw in 1982, this shift from high-tech to high-touch emphasizes objects we can touch—objects that, in turn, touch us.
Another approach is to pull content from the infinite digital space and anchor it in a specific physical location. The podcast Kiln, for example, is an "audio horror story" featuring Scandinavian mythological creatures, but it’s geo-restricted: you can only listen to it in certain Swedish forests. Similarly, Dérive, hérétique’s app for wandering, requires movement through the real world. To uncover the destination of a surprise journey or experience something like The Sentimental Stroll, you must engage with the physical world around you.
Another example is the immersive installation Field of Light, created by Bruce Munro. More than 50,000 illuminated stems, planted outdoors, respond to the movements of visitors and changes in weather. Every step, every gust of wind alters the installation, forcing the viewer to reconnect with the environment and the material world. Here, the digital becomes a bridge to nature, reawakening our attention to what is tangible, to what surrounds us.
Engaging Other Senses
These sensory experiences go beyond the on-demand delivery of sensations, inviting us to engage other senses.
The sound experience Ferme les yeux et regarde, an immersive podcast by the studio Nuits Noires, seeks to offer a new way of observing art—not through sight, but through sound alone. By focusing on a single sense, it allows the listener's imagination to fully unfold. Dérive, by encouraging us to map out our own journey without the constraints of time, sharpens our sense of direction and alters our perception of time. Mejnoun’s Egg, a time capsule created by Ferdinand Barbier, invites its recipient to imagine what lies within, fostering an awareness of the passage of time.
Some experiences literally feed our senses, like Le Son du Chocolat Inspired by the idea of extending the indulgent ritual beyond the shop, each sound creation enhances the exploration of chocolate’s textures and flavors. For the caramelized almond and candied orange mendiant, the music mirrors the sensory experience: it starts with the sharp, crisp crack of the almond, followed by the more delicate snap of caramel, which shatters and resonates a bit longer. Then, softer notes arise, evoking the subtle sweetness of candied oranges. In the background, children’s laughter brings a playful lightness to the experience. Slowly, everything harmonizes, much like the flavors, until it culminates in a burst of taste.
“Perfumes, colors, and sounds echo each other,” wrote Charles Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du mal. The sense of time, space, and imagination seem to resonate on the same synesthetic wavelength.
Reason? Resonance!
Our seemingly insatiable desire for comfort, control, and efficiency runs counter to our ability to foster sensitive connections with the world—what Hartmut Rosa refers to as experiences of resonance. He explains that “resonance cannot be manufactured, predicted, purchased, stored, accumulated, or forced. Much like grace, resonance always has the character of a gift, of something that is bestowed upon or befalls us.” This unpredictability and rarity are central to the allure of art and profound experiences.
Trying to make reality available, to simulate its effects, to act on it with these universal remote controls that we hold in our hands for most of our waking hours, is the best way to cut ourselves off from resonance. It’s a senseless, insensitive digital world.
By embracing digital technology more mindfully—gently and with a lighter touch—we open ourselves to experiences that resonate with our senses, grounding us in both the world and ourselves. Life, with all its imbalance, is like a delicate dance, where our senses instinctively find their rhythm—much like those who revel in the rain rather than wait for the storm to pass. It is akin to love, where one partner breathes and the other ignites. In this tension, we discover the spark. To awaken the senses is, ultimately, to reconnect with the soul of the world.
Marie Dollé & Antoine Mestrallet, co-founder hérérique
hérétique operates at the crossroads between a think-tank, a development studio, a publishing house and a consulting agency. Our mission is to imagine, craft and share alternative visions of the digital world, freed from the californian model.