The Sculptures of Touch is a research-driven new media artwork developed through a long-term artistic inquiry into touch, memory, and historical trauma. Rather than representing history through images or narratives, the project reconstructs historical traces through embodied interaction. It proposes that political trauma does not reside solely in archives, but persists within muscular memory and tactile response.

The work draws on control-related structures from Taiwan’s White Terror and martial law period—including barricades, detention walls, bunkers, and restraint devices. These elements are not presented as static monuments, but reconfigured as tactile interfaces. Participants engage with them physically, tracing their contours and surface textures. A motion capture system records these gestures as three-dimensional trajectories, which are then transformed into volumetric 3D-printed sculptures.

Through this process, the bunker, barricade, and the wall—embodying the historical memory of the White Terror—becomes a site of tactile encounter. Through the act of touch, memory and emotion are not only recorded, but made perceptible to the artist. The body becomes a sensing instrument, and touch an act of historiography, as traces of pressure, hesitation, and movement are captured and re-materialized into physical form. 

Rather than reconstructing historical events, the project preserves the act of contact itself. It allows memory to exist not only as narrative, but as embodied form. By situating Taiwan’s White Terror within a broader discourse of Cold War trauma and state violence, The Sculptures of Touch proposes an alternative model of remembrance—one that resists disembodied, data-driven paradigms and instead retains the emotional and physical imprint of human experience.

Director: Hsin-Chien Huang
3D printing: Hsin-Chien Huang
Programmer: Jiun-Yan You, Wei-Chieh Chiu
3D artist: Pei-Yang Yeh
Motion capture: Axis 3D Technology, Inc.
Video documentation: Zhong-Han Fan
Photography: Yui-Chuen Leung 

Hsin-Chien Huang (TW) is a Taiwanese new media artist and Distinguished Professor at National Taiwan Normal University. His work explores immersive storytelling through XR, integrating interactive media, installation, and performance. His projects have been presented internationally at major festivals including the Venice Film Festival, and Prix Ars Electronica. His work Samsara received major international recognition, including the Jury Award at SXSW and Best VR Story at Cannes XR. His practice focuses on embodiment, perception, and the relationship between technology and human experience.

In The Sculptures of Touch, Huang replaces detached scanning with the “vulnerable intelligence of the hand.” Treating touch as a living archive, the work challenges visual-centric heritage by repositioning the hand as a primary interface to contested histories. It shows how simple technology can yield profound insights into bodily memory and historical trauma, recovering humanity within the digital realm. The project proves technology can carry affect rather than erase it, producing a sensitive choreography of recall over a cold record of ruins. While haptic feedback could deepen the experience, its conceptual maturity in somatic archiving is undisputed. By reorienting digital tools from extraction toward care, the jury recognizes this pioneering work as a landmark contribution to embodied digital archiving and post-visual heritage practice.