Challenging VR's Procrustean Bed: Disability, Tactile Epistemologies, Worldbuilding

In this episode, host Ana-Maria Carabelea is joined by artist Iz Paehr to talk about inherently ableist technologies. Their work Feeling Virtual: An Archive of Touch looks at how digital technologies can be used to make cultural heritage more accessible. Challenging the sensorial hierarchies and ableist assumptions built into XR technologies, Iz explores the potential of touch and disabled ways of knowing the world around. 

Host: Ana-Maria Carabelea
Producers: Ana-Maria Carabelea, Christopher Sonnleitner, Marlene Grinner
Editing: Yazdan Zand
Music: Karl Julian Schmidinger

Ars Electronica:
https://ars.electronica.art/
https://www.instagram.com/arselectronica/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/arselectronica

Resources:
Tactile Descriptions: A Workbook

Transcript

Iz Paehr: I would provocatively say that virtual reality should perhaps just be called visual reality because the technology is so visually oriented. 

Ana-Maria Carabelea: Welcome to Art Is Not a Thing, the podcast series about art as a practice of critical inquiry, knowledge production and world building. My name is Ana Carabelea and on this podcast, I talk to artists and researchers whose work questions and reimagines our practices in and of the world. In this episode, I'm joined by artist Iz Paehr to talk about inherently ableist technologies. In 2025, Iz was an artist in residence as part of S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o, looking at how digital technologies can be used to make cultural heritage more accessible. Challenging the sensorial hierarchies and ableist assumptions built into XR technologies, Iz explored the potential of touch and disabled ways of knowing the world around. Welcome Iz! Thank you so much for joining me today. It a real pleasure to have you on this episode. 

Iz: Hi Ana, this is Iz speaking. I'm very excited to be here with you today and to get into all things touch and disability. Thank you so much. 

Ana: Let's start from the beginning, which is the fact that the world we live in is not built for disabled people. Most of the time our built environments, our cities, our homes, public spaces, are not designed with disability in mind. And despite that, instead of grappling with the need to design for all, we as a society usually tend to assign a lack to individuals who then must learn how to navigate a world that simply isn't built for them. And I wanted to ask you how do you think disability should be understood? What are we doing wrong? What can we do better? 

Iz: Thanks for this question. I'll start with a small access practice, a visual tactile description. So yeah, I always really like to jump into access-making when we theorize access. So, I'm joining from my soft cozy crib couch in Berlin and I'm a white non-binary person with short hair and I often rock or sway just a little bit. Sometimes also just with my hands dancing. And on some days, you may also feel if you are near me, my walking stick nearby.  

So, you mentioned disability and I thought I would start with a small definition of how I think about disability. And I mostly think about it as an epistemic position. And that means disability is a way of knowing and making worlds. And knowing can mean knowing exclusions, but also knowing how to build community, experiencing the world through our senses, the way we move, speak, communicate and think, the histories of our languages, and the ways we hack technologies when thinking about disability. To me, all these resistant practices are part of it. But you asked specifically about exclusions. I want to speak about that as well. Many spaces, be they build, be they social, be they technological, or all of them, are not designed for the reality that human bodies and minds exist in a thrilling variety and disability is routinely devalued because ableism tells us that there's one non-disabled and supposedly correct way to be in the world. But spoiler alert, there's not. I mentioned ableism, so I also want to unpack that briefly. Ableism is a system of oppression that is deeply intertwined with other oppressive forces such as racism, cis sexism, etc. And ableism creates a hierarchy based on socially constructed ideas around normalcy, health, fitness. It basically tells us that there is a right way to be human. And about what we're getting wrong. How that shows for disabled people is often that in an ableist society we experience a lot of misfit experiences. That's a term by disability scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson that describes the moments in which disabled body-minds don't fit into the built and social spaces of mainstream society. To give you one example of that, many cultural institutions in Europe are far from being accessible. I want to also stress that there's a multitude of answers to your question around what disability is, how ableism functions, and of course, what can be done differently. And every disabled person, every person experiencing ableism will probably give another answer. But one answer I want to also add to what I've discussed so far is that we're also doing this interview in times of disabling violence in the Arabic region, and we are challenged to also honor disability while fighting for conditions that are less disabling. 

Ana: Right. And some of the issues that we see in the real world, the hierarchy of the senses, the lack of inclusion that still persists, are amplified or at least replicated in the virtual or online worlds that are either mostly visual or make similar assumptions about the human body. Can you tell us a bit more about the assumptions embedded into these technologies and in particular VR technology, which is the one that you're focusing on? 

Iz: Yes. So, when technologies are designed without disabled people in the room, or at least disabled people in mind, exclusions arise. And when you think about all the ways that you interact with technology on a daily basis, from playing a game, receiving and reading news, or interacting with systems, for example, in disaster planning, it becomes very evident and tangible how lack of inclusion plays out for disabled people. When technologies perpetuate ableism, it’s called techno ableism. Ashley Shew wrote a really good book about that. And at the same time, disabled people are also hackers and makers of technology. And there's an article by Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch that is called Crip Techno-science Manifesto that gets into the many ways that disabled people make technological worlds. So, my work tries to hold both the exclusions, but also the possibilities of how it could be otherwise. My current work with virtual and extended reality began with a misfit experience with commercial VR headsets. I wanted to play a game and it required the use of both controllers of the Quest 3 headset. But holding two controllers at once and my walking stick at the same time isn't easy and just didn't work. So, misfit experience, friction. And also, it really piqued an interest. So as a short-term hack, I invented what I would call an access hack, and that's a shoulder strap from the back that I attached the two Quest controllers on both sides and then I would put it around my neck. And that meant I could let the controller dangle down and hold my stick in the meantime. But also interacting with these commercial VR technologies, my misfit experience was somewhat doubled because I also experienced double vision at times and that made using the headset only possible temporarily. I'm far from being alone in these experiences. Kathrin Gerling and Katta Spiel have written an amazing article, and the article is called A Critical Examination of Virtual Reality Technology in the Context of the Minority Body. This article shows in detail how VR is very limited in the kinds of bodies it presumes, and most of all, it assumes sighted users or as one of the disabled experts that I had the pleasure to interview throughout the course of my project said: there was no blind person in the space when VR was invented. So, throughout the residency I also asked other disabled people not only what's working or not working for them in relationship to VR and other technologies, but also what they would desire from virtual reality. And I would provocatively say that virtual reality should perhaps just be called visual reality because the technology is so visually oriented, and most VR applications dominantly make use of the visual. There are also haptics available through the controllers, but they're often used as just a secondary tool to support visual information and not in their own right. And yeah, a deafblind expert that tested these existing commercial controllers, for example, was really underwhelmed and said that they just feel more boring than the controllers of an old TV remote. So yeah, to sum that up a bit, I think in disabled communities there are these misfit experiences. With technologies and they do have real world consequences because our lives are so intertwined with technologies and at the same time disabled people also have wishes and desires towards technology. And I think that's where things get interesting. 

[Music] 

Ana: Iz Paehr is an artist designer working at the intersection of tactile access, critical technological practice and transfeminist world building. Their experiences with disability inform their work and drive their commitment to disability justice. They develop experimental tools such as haptic controllers and multisensorial virtual environments and engage CRIP theory and methodologies as generative design practices. Iz has presented work in institutional residencies, exhibitions and research-based teaching formats, connecting critical practice with collaborative pedagogy.  

[Music] 

Ana: Perhaps now we can move into talking about your project and in particular how it challenges the ways in which these technologies fail to understand and include minority bodies, thus also missing out on the perspectives and potential that these positions carry. 

Iz: Yes, I'd love to talk about that. So, my project is called Feeling Virtual: An Archive of Touch, and it emerged through a S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o residency with the hosts Salzburg Festival Archive and Ars Electronica. So, The Archive of Touch is an extended reality installation that can be experienced through the Quest 3 headset and controllers, as well as custom built haptic controllers, and I'll try to explain or describe the experience in words. So, imagine wearing a Quest 3 headset with controllers. The Archive of Touch opens and looking is possible, but it's not necessary. So, in front of you is an opera dress, and it's only visible through a soft shimmer. But once you move your arms, you can feel vibrations that help you trace the contours of the dress and different materials that you encounter, such as lace or silk or plastic diamonds. They all feel differently in the vibrotactile feedback. And you can imagine this vibrotactile feedback maybe as vibrations dancing lightly in your hands. So, touch creates the dress, and every touch is also accompanied by the sound of the corresponding material. And certain parts of the costume vibrate more strongly, and they pull you towards these positions with a humming sound as well. And then upon touch, a tactile description plays and this tactile description is also accompanied by subtitles, and it offers a tactile description of what that part of the dress feels like. And if you're sighted, then you will notice how your touches also create the visuals of the dress. So the more you touch, the more the dress becomes visible. But the senses unfold in a symphony and not in a hierarchy. So, touch is the creative force making this world. Currently, the Archive of Touch offers tactile and multisensorial access to five objects from the Salzburg Festival archive. And a part of the project that I'm excited about is also that these objects can be sensed through controllers that I built myself. So, these controllers I call tactile patches. And the idea behind them is that I wanted to create controllers that one can wear on the body in a way that feels best. So, they are open in their form, but to make it more concrete for you, they are basically small tactile blankets, and they have vibrotactile elements inside. And because they come in different forms, they can be strapped to legs, shoulders, backs, cheeks, or they can also just lie gently on one's lap. Like the Quest controllers, they vibrate as you would trace the dresses or also props from the archive. But unlike the Quest controllers, they don't require hands or a certain way of holding and gripping. They can be felt in a multitude of ways. So, building these controllers was a very experimental and collaborative project. I worked with Arduino, I like to think, with this concept by Remi M. Yergeau that's called criptastic hacking. So criptastic hacking is not about hacking bodies to fit technologies, but about hacking how we think about technologies or repurposing technologies for ourselves.  

So, yeah, there was a summer spent with Arduino and the little vibration motors that I stuck to various parts of my body and also to some unlucky test players. But it was a lot of fun. But then I was lucky that my mentor, Katta Spiel, connected me to Dennis Wittchen from the Sensorimotor Interaction Group. And they had already developed some hardware for haptics. So, we brought our interest together. And yeah, I finally had really crisp, nice vibration motors at hand. And the challenge became to connect them to the Quest headset and to sort of open that usually quite closed technology of virtual reality hardware to integrate other custom built controllers and objects. Yeah, and I also had a lot of help with that by a Unity developer, Jasper Meiners. So, yeah, without those people, that wouldn't have happened, but it was really exciting.  

Something that I can also tell from this process is that people have worked for decades to put tiny screens into headsets. So, when moving away from that and when trying to incorporate other senses, specifically haptics, there are a lot of challenges and also a lot of excitement happening. So, yeah, for me, that was the most exciting part of the project, even though it was also a real challenge. 

Ana: Thanks so much, Iz, for that very detailed description of what sounds like a very complicated setup. I can almost picture it now without having seen it or experienced it. Moving on. The fact that certain bodies are marginalized by these technologies, but not only by technologies, as we've seen, is rooted in this hierarchy of the senses that privileges sight. And you're addressing the root of this problem by focusing on touch. And what's more, you're bringing touch into a space that is historically opposed to it: the archive. Why is that important? What is the potential of touch as an epistemic tool? 

Iz: Yeah, I love this question. So many people have probably encountered the sentence Look, don't touch. So I always say that we live in a Look, don't touch culture. And that applies specifically to archives and museums as well. Blind and deafblind researchers have done tons of work pointing out and analyzing the exclusions that arise from this focus on the visual. But one concept that really stood out to me is the concept of distantism. Distantism describes how Western societies privilege senses that work at a distance, such as sight and hearing. In contrast, touch is devalued and sometimes even punished. This concept originates from deafblind poet John Lee Clark. Last summer, I also had the pleasure to be in an email seminar by John Lee Clark, where we practiced virtual touch. So other ways of being in touch as well, that breach or partially breach through distantism. But also, every disabled person that I talk to about touch had so much to share about touch. I think that within disabled communities, there are vast tactile knowledges, and a lot of my own thinking around touch also emerged through being in touch with disabled thinkers and makers. But back to the archives. So, yeah, the archive I worked with is the Salzburg Festival Archive. And in the Salzburg Festival Archive, costumes and props and materials from over 100 years of opera and theater history are cared for. And that makes it an amazing place for curious fingers. And I also was very much supported by the archivists of the Salzburg Festival Archive to get in touch with their materials. And so, I touched my way through all these amazing materials, and I learned so much through these experiences of touch that I also ended up writing a workbook about tactile descriptions that we talk about later. But I want to get into also a moment where archiving and digital technologies come together again. And that is that a lot of archives, like the Salzburg Festival Archive, are currently 3D-scanning some of their collections. I learned about this being done through a technique called photogrammetry in Salzburg, which entails taking many photos of an object from different angles and then generating or building 3D models from that visual information, or visual and spatial information. And these scans do two things really well, and that is shape and also surface. But they are again, very visually oriented. And if scanning, for example, becomes a primary way that costumes and other materials are digitally archived, then a lot becomes lost. So the feeling of lace, for example, in the seams, or the fact that I touch diamonds, and they were just made from plastic and touch does reveal that, but a 3D scan may not reveal that. And also in the case of these costumes, they were often multi layered, so they have an outer layer, but then there's another skirt underneath and a hoop skirt, and different structures. So, for example, in the legs of trousers of the figure Papageno from a 1997 edition of the Zauberflöte, it's a very puffy, plump appearing costume. But within the leg there was a leather belt attached. And the leather belt was used for the person playing Papageno to attach the trousers that are so huge to their relatively small human legs. So, these things we can learn about through touch and through tactile encounters. So, we learn about material texture, weight, about how something is made and produced, and about the bodies that were in interaction with these materials as well. And these are things we can't learn through visual means alone. I think it's not just about this idea that allowing touch can make materials accessible to disabled people, but as you also called it in your question, which I love so much, is that you mentioned touch as an epistemic practice. We can learn from disabled communities about touch to then generate these knowledges, these tactile knowledges about archival materials. So, I think we need a tactile turn in archiving, and an attention to the ways that we know and create our worlds through touch. And I think that disabled people should be the ones to lead us towards tactile knowledges. 

Ana: Finally, I wanted to ask you about another resource that you've published this month. You've had a very busy March. You've published also the Tactile Descriptions Workbook. Do you want to tell us more about it and maybe tell our listeners where they can find it? 

Iz: Yes. So, I've mentioned before that finding tactile language for the experiences within the costume storage was difficult. So, for example, I struggle to differentiate between different kinds of soft. So, I would touch a soft object here, another soft surface there, and then another here. And I said soft, soft, soft, but they actually felt completely different. So that's also an experience that my blind play testers told me about. That tactile language is something that has to be trained, that may not come easy for people who are not used to it. So, I realized that I needed a more nuanced and structured approach. And so, with reading about touch and language and touch and science, and by talking to disabled experts and also my mentors Aimi Hamraie and Katta Spiel, I developed a workbook. And the workbook was then also tested by the Access Tech Lab at TU Vienna and in workshops such as Science Week in Berlin. So ,there was a lot of in-progress playing with tactile language and modifying it, trying to make the workbook as accessible as possible. And now the workbook is done in the first iteration and it's out in the world. So, what it does is that it guides you through the process of describing tactile experiences. So, a tactile description puts experiences of touch into words. It communicates how it feels to touch, be touched and be in touch with a touch-thing. And a touch-thing is a new word that describes anything tactile, ranging from an object, the fur of an animal, a loved one's hand, a breeze of air, stim toys in your hand, a soft cozy sofa touching your bag can be all of these things. Anything that you've consent to be in touch with. Just to share a few more conceptual thoughts on the Tactile Descriptions Booklet is that tactile descriptions sit within a network of crip descriptions. So, in the beginning of this episode I also offered a visual tactile description. So visual descriptions are very well established in disabled communities and there's one especially great project that is called Alt Text is Poetry and that project is around finding poetic language to describe images on the web or images in general. So, my project wants to contribute to these existing amazing practices all over disabled communities. And yeah, I hope to do so by also addressing a sense that many of us share and many of us experience in our own unique ways. And yeah, I'm curious what you make of it. 

Ana: Great. We'll also add the link in the description of the episode so that our listeners can check it out and get in touch with you. Thank you so much for joining me today, Iz. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on this episode. 

Iz: Thank you so much for the invitation and yeah, it was great fun to me as well to think through your important questions and to connect some ideas around VR, disabled experience, techno ableism and what we can do to make the worlds that we truly desire. 

Ana: That's it for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and hope you enjoyed it. Join us next month for a new episode and in the meantime, follow us or share the show with someone you think might like it.