haptic

BLOGANUARY 2025 DAY 7

Get me with my edgy, one word titles. That would make me “down with the kids” according to my kids, which of course is heavy with irony and thus means I am deeply lame and an old lady. Oh well.

I like the word haptic. I was introduced to it by a friend years ago and it’s one of those words which resonated and has stuck with me. These days it has a wider meaning from that of simply the process and sense of touch, as we move into various versions of reality and technology attempts to recreate this human experience.

I was discussing this rather lofty concept with my son yesterday evening, which is when we tend to chat these days. He is a night owl and I am an early bird, but now he lives in France, the time difference allows our schedules to just about connect at about 9.30pm UK time so although I have to stop myself yawning, it’s nice to hear his thoughts. He was telling me that he was going to watch Vengeance Most Fowl, the new Wallace & Gromit movie, on my recommendation. I have seen it a couple of times now and I think what I find so appealing at this point in time is that it is just so indisputably a) English and b) human. The little putty puppets have fingerprints which change as the animation rolls along, and although this one is based around technology gone mad – more irony – there is something so wonderfully eccentric and yes, haptic, about the whole thing: it could only have come from the hands and minds of humans. I get so fed up with AI being used to make images of things which were perfectly fine without any intervention (birds, sunsets, clouds, trees, flowers) and there is now a profusion of grotesque hyper-realistic, over-saturated and plain weird pictures; I find it nauseating. One of the many reasons I wanted to make birdwatching booklets was so that paper and pencil and writing could be used and enjoyed.

Anyway, enough of my old lady ramblings. My son thoroughly enjoyed Vengeance Most Fowl, and then watched The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, so a Wallace & Gromit mini-marathon.

Meanwhile I have spent most of today on my laptop. I haven’t started my new Leuchtturm sketchbook yet as I always take a little while to bond with it, and feel better once I have filmed my sketchbook tour as then that one can go away with my other finished sketchbooks, thus paving the way for the shiny new one.