Cheryl Akner-Koler

Professor

08-450 42 23

+46 70 279 83 76

Department of Design, Interior Architecture and Visual Communication / Industrial Design

I work in the field of Theoretical & Applied Aesthetics with a focus on how our everyday aesthetic experience in the tangible world drives creative processes. I currently finished a 3-year artistic research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, entitled HAPTICA that was a collaborative project with culinary artists from Campus Grythytta, Örebro University concerning haptic sensitivities. Haptic is usually referred to as the sense of touch. Touch involves experiences of texture, temperature and vibration, perceived by the nervous system through the skin. As soon as touch includes intentional muscle movement, such as grasping a 3-D volume and sensing its weight, proportions, density & shape, or picking up a tool to use it, we transcend touch and tactility and enter haptics. One main aim in this project was to explore haptic aspects of food & drink combinations and meal experiences. We compare the haptic attributes of the hand in relation to the mouth & nose and how this can drive the active gestalt process.