On social media, one of our favorite creators is @damileearch who repeatedly produces thought-provoking and elegantly beautiful video essays on architecture. She often highlights how important the sense of touch, or haptics, is to the architectural experience, which of course make us immediate fans!

In a recent video, she explores the Japanese concept of Ma, the space or gap “between the elements.” https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cw8A4nFvy7I/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== In architectural physical spaces, the gap can be the negative space as you transition between architectural elements, where sensations for the preceding and forthcoming element mix, such as the sound of running water, or the feel of stones beneath the feet, or the smell of wood. She notes how many Japanese storytellers fill Ma with the visceral sensory sensations of touch, delicately exhibited with evocative images and sounds that have powerful associations with haptic sensations like the texture of grass, or the wetness of rain. In a meaningful way, these sensations bring new interpretations and perspectives to Ma, a “place” where there may be no other language of expression than the sensory experience.

It strikes me as delightful that the concept of a place between the gaps with no language can still be expressed and explored with a multitude of meanings, and how the sensation of touch can play an essential role. This multitude reminds me of the foundational philosophical work by the German philosopher Gottlob Frege called “On Sense and Reference,” where he explains that any linguistic symbol, like a name or a word or a phrase, has two levels of understanding, the linguistic ‘sense,’ and the contextual, empirical ‘referent.’ There can be many ‘senses’ that refer or allude to the same referent, sometimes based solely on a perspective or point of view. In the in-between of things, the sense of touch may act as the referent, opening a literal and figurative passageway to memories and emotions, like a junction of the symbolic and the empirical as you dwell between the elements.

Although not its original intention, vring allows you to put Frege’s multi-level understanding of language into literal practice when you not only chose the ‘sense’ of a vring by naming it, but also its referent when you manifest an associated physical sensation, in this case a vibration. Both levels of information are available, ready to perhaps express Ma on your own terms. You may ‘fill the Gap with touch’ with every level of meaning at your fingertips.