151actively touches a world that is verified as physically real
through touch. ‘The human individual articulates the world
through the body (...) When ‘I’ perceive the concrete to be
something cold and hard, ‘I’ recognize the body as something
warm and soft.’ (Ando 1988) For our sense of movement (our
kinaesthetic sense) and the experience of space that is based
on it, the experience of touch – whether our perceptions of
our own movements and situatedness (proprioception) or
contact with surfaces – is an indispensable basis. Because of
its primordial character, the experience of touch is closely
related to the emotions. We say that something ‘touches us’
when it affects us directly and appeals to our feelings.
The physical constitution of touch, in particular through
our arms and the specific design of our hands, allows us to ex-
perience and internalize objects in accordance with our physi-
cal capacities. This encompasses certain patterns of percep-
tion and gesture, for example ‘grasping’ and ‘embracing’. By
feeling with the hands, a multiplicity of specific characteristics
of materials (> materiality) and surfaces are perceived: tem-
perature, humidity, the forms of reliefs, as well as properties
such as adhesiveness, slickness, roughness. The movement of
objects, vibrations, and even the sound waves of sound and
noise can be felt or sensed. In fact, the epidermis is the largest
organ of perception.
The principle that we see only that which we can ‘grasp’
is true not only for the tactile sensation of the reliefs of sur-
faces, but for large three-dimensional forms as well. The
bulges and contractions of a Baroque balustrade, for ex-
ample, invites us to comprehend it in tactile terms. We ‘feel’
smooth, hard, rounded forms or sharp edges when our eyes
probe them. Through rough surfaces, our visual experience
of space can be ‘roughened’ through details, as the probing
gaze so to speak rubs or chafes against them. Similarly, > po-
rosity fosters penetration, thereby provoking a deceleration
and intensification of vision. In particular, the way in which
the gaze glides across things is intimately related to the prob-