You're so welcome! What a pleasure to see your work again and chat with you at the conference.

I guess SOMEONE had to catch a plane or something, sheesh!

Great seeing you this weekend! Next time I hope we get to see each other's work :)

Nearing the end of #SCMS26, and guess what's still left to talk about? P18, Reexamining Esports with @a-c-cote.bsky.social, @maxwellfoxman.bsky.social, Keung Yoon Bae, and Taylore Woodhouse. Starting in 30 min in Alpine 1.

So far, reports from O'Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport indicate security lines are under 15 minutes. #SCMS26

Q: Stereoscopic nude reminded me of some artists. Idea of frontality: what would it look like to move out of Western concept. Dorsiality, turning away from homogenizing male gaze of west. History outside of europe?

A: TBH haven't been able to think of that at all.

Q: I'm writing a dissertation about teledildontics. Wondering how displacement of human sender disrupts teledildontics.

A: 1998 patent, both human to human and human to computer. People were thinking of both of those things.

A: Electo-muscular control system example. Perform speed of internet.

A, continued: No attempt at a "retro" style of rumble to remakes. Haptics still not of the past, remain newest version. Maybe some experimentation? Haptic tech constantly tries to present itself as future even if gamers interested in retro

A: That rumble is black-boxed, done in house.

A: David Harley does research on that. VR research giving people load of bread, sand. Really big issue right now is distribution, show up in festivals, but 90% or so actually end up getting scene. Love idea of embracing analog.

A: Texture through haptic feelings. Overlays to retro games.

A, continued: slipped in without you noticing the tech is layered on. Haptics marketers think I mean mundane is bad, but for me that's successful. How would my life be different if my smartphone no longer had haptic notifications? Between promise of revolution and making your life better in some way

Q and A (I missed the first question)

Q: Other, analog side of haptics. Taking notes on tablet that's supposed to feel like paper. Desire to return to analog feeling while retaining analog convenience.

A: Re-inscribe physical. Logitec released haptic mouse, wildly successful w/ competitive gaming

Complicated narratives of reproduction. Becomes system that promises connection but delivers control. Gamified logics in devices, but surveillance is what gets delivered. What counts as intimate virtual touch, which user receives touch, and what is "cybersex enough"?

Neimanis, "Bodies of Water," 2017.

Silicon cocoon for sensor inside body.

Fertility trackers look identical in form, register intimate information about female body. Sexual wellness promise optimization through cycle awareness. New form of bio control in era of techno-mediated reproduction.

The stroker had no sensors. Interaction remains persistently one-sided like a TV remote. Connection is 1-way, only penetrative toys equipped with sensors. Labor relies on penetrated party. Dildo only transmits sensation.

Imagining post human embrace. Moved toward domain of wellness.

Both fucking machines and teledildontics promise to produce post-human fucking, spectacle of automatization by distant controlling hand.

Rather than mediating intimacy at distance, redefine what intimacy can be. Which aspects of touch count? Translated and simplified.

Ultimate male fantasy: control female orgasm at your fingertips. Attempting to conceal lack of real control user has over technology. The thing one has control over. Choosing wave of intensity and vibration. Imaginary power to induce orgasms in partner far away. Performance of controlling.

Dylan Mulvin: Proxies the cultural work of standing in, 2021.

What is sufficiently haptic enough? All products a similar logic. Interface allows either one toy to mediate sensation to another, or user takes full control of other users toy.

Lovense remote app, WeVibe. Wearer experiences vibration.

Technology substitute for partner who couldn't be there. Hope they would allow one to feel sensory play, intimacy at distance. Tools for online sex workers, tech for couples. Development of phone sex into cyber sex.

Phone sex compresses bodies into voice; teledildontics compresses it into vibration

Finally @mkaisar.bsky.social on "Touch interrupted, teledildontics and virtual intimacy." Move from pleasure towards control and body surveillance. Desire to control orgasm of female body from afar. Intimate encounters with body. Failed promise of teledildontics to receive touch in form of vibration

Underpinned by increasingly specialized media practices. Specific to corporatized platforms.

Infuse novelty into traditional video. Ball that attempts to bring haptics into V-tubing streams.

Ideologies need subjects to actively recirculate them.

Those making/using virtual touch using language of realism. Strange and decidedly artificial sensations, new category: the techno-haptic real.

Each conversation a type of amateur media history. We're waiting for a "Perfect haptics." Importance of attending to micro-level changes. Meaning of technology is inherently cultural.

We're failing to account as media scholars for haptics.

Teledildontic Rocket League with Rylie Scarlet (spelling)

Lay discourse about virtualization of touch. Streamers do short personal media history to narrate previous instanciations of virtual touch.

So what? Why do these matter?

Product reviews, YouTube streams, trumpeted by enthusiasts. Doubted by others.

Netflix resurrected for haptic Voltron, Disney tried it - deeper and richer history. Touch-enabled ad for Arby's (curiously). Indicator of ephemerality of digital touch: trailer remains, haptics gone.

Streamers exaggerate, jumping and screaming, also adding graphics to screen like lightning bolt.

Influencers gushing about haptic feedback on trailer. No one copied this, no one thought it redefined trailer.

Haptic shirt: pain immersion. Vibration vest, product differentiation.

Examples together: this is going to be the next big thing. First-ness of technology circulates, not accurate at all!

Last summer, Apple debuted haptic trailer to F1. No audience members at this media studies conference even heard of this!

OWO Haptic System, talked at length about this a couple years ago. I had one of these shirts, got shocked by it a lot, hurts to remove because of sticky pads.

Maybe we've found it not to be all that consequential. Haptics journal, haptics is always talked about in its "infancy." Too routinized to be disruptive? New banalities of virtuality, quoting Boellstorff.

Are we waiting for a cultural groundswell? Maybe too deterministic.

List from 2008: list of active haptics labs. Cultural, institutional, material, and economic.

I feel like I've been here before: media studies should engage more robustly with haptics, been saying this for 20 years. How many converts have we won?

Valuable work unfolded OUTSIDE of media studies.

Next, @daveparisi.bsky.social "Just a little variation isn't worth strapping up for: The old materials and new banalities of virtual touch"

Touch feedback from smartphones to teledildontics.

End of VR boom, haptics invented throughout a range of technologies. Process of including touch in media.

Stone's advice: you're all beautiful, keep it up. Nothing we can't do if we keep going in the direction we are now - at the risk of sounding overly optimistic.

Bigdoll, Roadtrip, and Mooplay interfaces.

I.K.U., reversal of sex arcade. Corporation harvesting orgasm data from customers (?!), sexual excitement sent directly to brain. Transform into seven different bodies for desire of partner.