Can You Feel It: Effectuating Tactility and Print in the Contemporary is a palm-sized but densely argued investigation into what touch means in a designed world increasingly mediated by digital surfaces and technocratic systems — and who gets to define that experience.
About This Book
Initiated by Freek Lomme, director and curator at Onomatopee, this publication grew from an exhibition co-hosted by the Frans Masereel Centre and Z33, responding to a persistent observation: that Onomatopee's printed matter carries a materiality rarely encountered in contemporary publishing. The book takes that tactile quality as its subject. Six artists working in print practice and eight international academics across graphic design, materiality, theory, and art examine how physical interaction with objects has shifted in the digital age — and what that shift costs us as human beings. It is a book about graphic design and printed matter, but also about authorship, tradition, and the politics of the sensory environment.
Key Features
- 192 pages of essays, artistic contributions, and critical writing on tactility and print
- Edited by Freek Lomme, director and curator of Onomatopee
- Contributors include six contemporary artists and eight international academics and authors across graphic design, materiality, theory, and art
- Exhibition developed in partnership with the Frans Masereel Centre and Z33
- Published by Set Margins, [Details available upon request]
What You'll Discover
- How digital mediation has fundamentally altered our daily interaction with physical materials — and the human consequences of that alteration
- The politics of tactility: who authorises sensory experience in a designed environment shaped by technocracy
- How contemporary artists working in print practice engage with the materiality of graphic and printed matter as both medium and message
- The theoretical traditions underpinning our understanding of touch, texture, and the printed surface in art and design discourse
About the Author
Freek Lomme is the director and curator of Onomatopee, a publishing and project space known for printed matter with an exceptional material presence. He conceived this project as both an exhibition and a publication in response to ongoing conversation about the distinctive tactility of Onomatopee's output.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 192
- Dimensions: 14.8 x 10.5 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789083270609
- Publisher: Set Margins
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Graphic designers, print practitioners, design theorists, and anyone thinking seriously about materiality, the sensory environment, and what physical objects mean in an increasingly digital world.