SONG: “64 Actuators” [1] (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant [2].
SOURCE: “Jacket Lets You Feel the Movies” [3], IEEE Spectrum, 18 March 2009, as used in the post “Jacket makes movies feelies,” [4] (with perhaps a side order of “The satellite feels” [5] and “Touch the vision.” [6])
ABSTRACT:
This song feels more like… more like a sketch than a finished painting, like there are some details still left to fill in. But I think that fits with the general theme. It’s sort of an examination of this haptics business and the way we’re creating phantom sensations (instead of the persistence of vision [7], the persistence of motion?) that act as substitutes for the real thing.
So, naturally, I write a song about wearing a jacket that fools you into thinking you’re being touched by someone you want touching you. Stitch me up in these phantoms. Am I dreaming your fingers, your arms between the seams?
An actuator is the gizmo that makes your cell phone or Xbox controller vibrate.
I kinda wanted to base the guitar parts around Jefferson Airplane’s “Today” – a bassy acoustic with a slow, clean electric riff tweedling over it – but where the wah-wah came from is anybody’s guess. Sounds like waves. I also was thinking about The Long Winters’ The Worst You Can Do Is Harm [8], which I’ve been listening to a lot over the past few days. Odd way of getting lyrics to fit a song on that album. It works better than what I did here, but then again, this is just a sketch. You’ll have to imagine the rest. Touching you wirelessly.