Texture

Texture is the visual element that frequently serves as a stand-in for the qualities of another sense, touching. But, in fact, we can appreciate and recognise texture either by touch or sight individually, or by a combination of both. It is possible for a texture to have no tactile quality, only optical, like the lines of type on a printed page, or polka dots on material, or crosshatched lines in a doodle. Where there is actual texture, the tactile and optical qualities coexist, not like tone and colour which are unified in their comparable and even value, but separately and uniquely, affording individual sensation to the eye and the hand, even though we project onto both strong associative meaning. What sandpaper looks like and what sandpaper feels like have the same intellectual meaning, but not the same value. They are singular experiences which may or may not suggest each other under certain circumstances. The judgement of the eye is usually checked on by the hand by actual touching. Is it really smooth or does it just look that way? Is that an indentation or a raised mark?

Texture has reference to the composition of a substance through minute variations on the surface of the material. Texture should serve as a sensitive and enriching experience. At the 1967 Montreal Expo, the 5+ Comingo Pavilion was designed for visitors to explore the quality of their five senses. It was a popular and enjoyable exhibit. People sniffed away at a series of funnels offering a variety of odours, even though they suspected, and justifiably, that some would be unpleasant. They listening, they looked, tasted, but they stood hesitant and inhibited in front of the yawning holes designed to be reached into blindly. What did they fear? It appears that the natural, free, "hands on" investigation approach of the baby or young child has been conditioned out of the adult. Whatever the reason, the result starves one of our richest senses.

But in this increasingly simulated and plastic world, the problem arises infrequently. Most of our textural experience is optical, not tactile. Not only is texture faked rather convincingly in plastics and printed material and faked fur, but, also, much of what we see that is painted, photographed, and filmed convincingly presents texture that is not there. If we touch a photograph of silky velvet, we do not have the convincing tactile experience the visual clues promise. Meaning is based on what we see. This fakery is an important factor in survival in nature; animals, birds, reptiles, insects, fish, take on the coloration and texture of their surroundings as a protection against predators. Man copies this camouflage method in war in response to the same needs for survival that inspired it in nature.