Register For Free

Exhibitions

Derived from the Greek word for “to touch” or “to grasp”, haptic describes technology that simulates touch through force, vibrations, or motion, creating an experience of feeling feedback. It includes tactile textures and sensations on the skin, as well as kinesthetic sensations such as weight or body movement, hot and cold temperatures, and even ultrasonic high-frequency waves.

Haptics have been used in smartphones, game controllers, and virtual reality for years to enhance interactions with digital interfaces. Applying this same touch-based technology to artistic practice now opens up many new opportunities to make art more accessible to those who live with sensory impairments, using interactions that are naturally immersive and intuitive.

Haptic Horizons Art Symposium showcases disability-led perspectives in this field of artistic innovation, translating digital data into physical sensations.

What if an Hourglass Felt Like an Earthquake?

Artist

Deirdre Logue

Where To View

Art Installation @ Spice Factory

More
A promotional graphic for the art installation titled "What If An Hourglass Felt Like An Earthquake?". The image features a duotone purple and teal filter over a photograph of a large projector screen suspended in a studio, with dark stage curtains visible on the left. The title text is centred in bold, white lettering with a subtle drop shadow.

Entomophonia

Artist

Leon Louder

Where To View

Art Installation @ Spice Factory

More
A highly stylized neon-coloured promotional graphic for the art installation titled "ENTOMOPHONIA". Against a dark, star-speckled background with a large glowing moon, various insects—including a dragonfly, a moth, and a beetle—hover around digital sound wave visualizations. Glowing blue speakers and undulating liquid-like ripples suggest a fusion of nature and electronic sound.

Sensorial Plurality –
positioning access as a generative force

Artists

Connor Yuzwenko-Martin, Ebony R. Gooden, Kim Fullerton, Olivia Brouwer, Salima Punjani, and Willy Le Maitre

Where To View

Group Art Exhibition @ Centre[3]

More
A candid shot from an opening reception inside one of Centre[3]'s galleries. The gallery has white walls and light wood floors. Several visitors are standing and observing various artworks, including a series of red figurative sketches on the wall and a bright digital projection of a portrait framed in an ornate oval border.

Digital Gallery

Explore some of the pieces shaping this year’s symposium 

Digital Gallery

Programming paving the way to a more equitable future in the arts

View Event Schedule

Attend the 2026
Haptic Horizons Art Symposium

Register For Free

Generously Supported By Our Partners

City of Hamilton logo
City of Hamilton
The official logo for the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The black graphic features a stylised three-petalled trillium flower in the centre, flanked by the English and French names of the foundation.
Ontario Trillium Foundation
Ontario Arts Council logo
Ontario Arts Council
Canada Council for the Arts logo
Canada Council for the Arts

We extend our sincere gratitude to our funders for their invested belief in the power of the arts to drive meaningful social impact, and for continuing to support work that builds more inclusive, responsive, and accessible cultural futures. 

Connor Yuzwenko-Martin

Artist Statement

Vibro-Pack, Sensorial Plurality 2026

Packing good vibes!

This is a Vibro-Pack. It takes sounds, music, and other auditory events, and converts them to vibrotactile sensations. It also uses integrated lighting to convey emotional cues and intensity.

Imagine a Vibro-Pack on your lap in a theatre, dance performance, orchestral symphony, or even on your couch with a playlist of soothing meditations.

How does this make you feel? If you are sighted, does it feel different when you close your eyes? What about hearing – do you notice anything new if you put in earplugs?

The Vibro-Pack is a prototype developed by The Invisible Practice in Edmonton, Alberta using the wisdom and expertise of many people from across the country. We welcome your suggestions and inspirations. Leave a note in the book provided, or make an ASL video message and send it to general@invisiblepractice.ca!

How to use

  1. Pick up a Vibro-Pack. Mind the cables.
  2. Hold it in your hands or lap. Or against your chest – anywhere, anyhow!
  3. Enjoy the pre-programmed ASL performance loop by Christine Roschaert
  4. With a friend? Share a pack, and see if you react differently to the same sensations!


Medium/Material List

  • Haptics and lighting elements
  • Transducers embedded in foam
  • LED strip sewn into white fabric band
  • Salvaged fabrics & foam


Light+Vibrotactile Technical Exploration

Light+Vibrotactile, or L+V for short, is a technical exploration where we challenge ourselves to consider:
“How can the most poetic expressions of the world be conveyed through sight and touch, rather than sound?”

Developed through a DeafBlind sensorium, L+V has transformed into a no-holds-barred experiment that challenges the limitations of sensory technology, creative accessibility, and our fundamental assumptions about what inclusion can look like.

As of February 2026, L+V is in an ‘Exhibition and Reflection’ phase. We bring the Vibro-Pack and other learnings to new spaces and communities, and seek thoughtful feedback and inspirations on the potential futures of this work.

Credits

Creative vision by Christine ‘Coco’ Roschaert, Connor Yuzwenko-Martin, and members of the Deaf and DeafBlind community.

Design by Judah Truong.

Other collaborators: Mustafa Rafiq and Ainsley Hillyard

Funders: Canada Council for the Arts and Edmonton Arts Council

About The Invisible Practice

The Invisible Practice is an Indigenous-informed Deaf arts collective dedicated to building capacity for Deaf-centric creativity. We cultivate a culture of creative play and brave experimentation, and foster safer spaces for Deaf artists to discover new modes of storytelling and solidarity-building.

Learn more about us at https://invisiblepractice.ca

Olivia Brouwer

Artist Statement

More than words can say, Sensorial Plurality 2026

What would our thoughts feel like if we could only communicate through vibrational frequencies? If touch was our primary sense of communication, how would you interpret the characteristics of tactile textures into sound and vibration? I am interested in discovering the answers to these questions by offering tactile interfaces that prompt sighted, non-sighted, hearing, and non-hearing audiences to experiment with and to learn to translate thoughts into the unspoken language of vibration. Much of my work is inspired by the Rorschach Inkblot Test, a psychological experiment to discover how the mind determines meaning and perception from an abstract image. I’m especially interested in learning from Blind and Deaf audiences in order to observe the way their interpretation of abstraction differs from folks who are visually and audibly able-bodied.

More than words can say is an interactive booth installation that is a cross-pollination between art, language, accessibility, and technology. From the Haptic Horizons residency in fall 2024 and Sync Re-Ignite residency in fall 2025 came this multi-sensory project inspired by creative interpretations of image descriptions, which evolved into alternative translation for describing tactile images through sound and vibration with a synthesizer programmed in Pure Data software. The synthesizer and paired tactile prompts are displayed within a booth installation where the hidden translator inside is speaking through sound and vibration to the audience outside, composing a multi-sensory language. My target audience is open to anyone of all ages and abilities to act as a translator and a listener. The “translator” is the active interpreter of the tactile prompts, while the passive “listener” receives what is being communicated, imagining what textures inspired the message. The translator has complete agency with how the artworks are interpreted to both acquaintances and strangers alike. Both active and passive participants are essential for acknowledging one’s thoughts through encoded messages, emphasizing the need to pay attention to the other’s expression carefully, and to listen with an open, creative mind, especially towards marginalized voices with communication barriers.

The installation references a telephone booth-like space, a space known for audio communication only, exposing the exclusion of the Deaf community from accessing communicative technology. Although sound is one access point to experiencing this creative communication, vibration plays a key role in providing a haptic experience for Deaf audiences, a sensory engagement that is often overlooked from those with hearing abilities.

As an additional subtle symbol related to my spiritual life, this booth installation also references not only the difficulty in finding the words, but also the joy of creative communication with an unseen God through prayer. The booth can act as a tangible prayerful experience when trying to express language to communicate thoughts from the heart towards the hidden listeners, or listening to a message you are trying to understand.

More than words can say acknowledges that there are unique ways of communicating beyond words that also depend less on vision, opening possibilities of a universal language to include a wider audience.

Kim Fullerton

Artist Statement

Summer Day (after William Blair Bruce) and Friends (after Myfanwy Spencer Pavelic), Sensorial Plurality 2026

My current video series calls out the lack of visibility and representation of disabled
bodies in western art and popular culture, both historical and contemporary. In the
videos, I intervene in and re-write art historical images by inserting physically
disabled bodies into them. Combining drawing, stop-motion animation, video
footage, integral captions and vibration, the videos make space for and assert the
vitalness of the disabled body in image making. Further, to create more inclusive
experiences for deaf, blind and disabled audiences, I have brought sound and
vibration as haptic experiences into the series.

I start by choosing an image, usually a historical painting of two women interacting
with each other in an environment like a park or bar. I then recreate the painting as a
charcoal drawing, a process I capture in roughly 500 frames of stop-motion
animation. When the drawing is complete, I erase/wipe out parts of it and draw over
and into it the signifiers of disability, such as a wheelchair; this too is captured in the
animation. The animation is then edited with found footage, shot footage and sound.
The final videos are presented as single-channel videos connected to vibrotactile
pillows that convey sound as vibration to viewers who hold them.

While it addresses the absence of disabled bodies in art, and asserts our presence by
literally drawing the disabled body into images, my work is more than an exercise in
widening representation. It serves the political function of asserting our presence in
public space and public discourses, asserts our visibility and the right to be present
and to take up space. By drawing disabled bodies into existing artworks that portray
people in public spaces, a transformation happens and a re-reading of the image is
accomplished. The transformation is an act of resistance.

Ebony R. Gooden

Artist Statement

ANGST, Sensorial Plurality 2026

Ache.
Pressure.
Tight.
Heavy.
Drowning.

ANGST is a five-minute ASL poetry video shaped by breath and the handshape of five. The work unfolds through cycles of tension and containment, mirroring the internal rhythm of anxiety.

There is no sound. Breath is translated into chest-worn vibration, allowing the audience to feel pressure rather than hear it. The body becomes the site of listening.

This work holds space for what is often unseen and unspoken. Anxiety is not performed outward because it lives inside the body; carried, endured, and always building. An endless cycle of angst and self care.

Willy Le Maitre

Artist Statement

Chroma Corral, Sensorial Plurality 2026

Chroma Corral adopts the interface of a networked game—a digital screen serving as a shared threshold. Within this space, players do not navigate with controllers or keys, but through the visceral: voice, enunciation, and the vibrating intensities emanating from the
chest, throat, mouth, and gut. These somatic signals scatter plots of colour and trigger bursting, emergent forms across the canvas. Frequencies are mapped chromatically. The dominant tones (most common) sets the background colour scheme.

The project’s interplay teases a “techno-logic” situation, where the loop of sensory feedback propels a restless inclination toward improvisation. In this networked environment, playing with others adds a thick layer of exploration; unique visual signatures ensure that one’s individual input remains recognizable within the collective fray and meshes with others in indeterminable ways.

As players learn the system’s behaviours, they begin to push against them. While it wears the skin of a game, Chroma Corral possesses no fixed rules or win-states—it functions instead as “play,” a raw, unscripted choreography of sound and light.

chromacorral.com

Salima Punjani

Artist Statement

Below Awareness, Sensorial Plurality 2026

Below Awareness is a multi-sensory installation exploring presence, disruption, and encounters within aquatic environments. Using hydrophone recordings from Hamilton’s waterways, the work captures layered moments: geese calling to each other–their webbed feet swishing underwater, the playful imagining of small beings making unnameable sounds during recording sessions, and the unexpected arrival of a train—its vibrations traveling through water and earth, audible below the surface well before it became visible above.

Through synthesized sound, vibrotactile translation, fabric collage, and soft sculpture, the work holds space for both wonder and disturbance. Textile forms imagine the creatures encountered during recording—a playful speculation on who shares these underwater worlds. Meanwhile, haptic elements translate the contrast between tranquility and industrial intrusion, inviting visitors to feel the subsonic tremor that announces disruption before arrival.

The piece asks: who and what do we encounter when we listen beneath the surface? How does industrial activity permeate these shared environments in ways that exceed immediate perception? What coexists in spaces we might otherwise perceive as simply peaceful or simply disrupted?