Touch Aesthetics Fellowship

Promotional flyer featuring an orange-red gradient background with dark dots on one side. Logos for Leonardo CripTech Incubator, Narrative and Emerging Media, and the Arizona State University frame the center, which contains details of the Touch Aesthetics fellowship. Featuring four female-presenting individuals interspersed.
We are proud to announce the fellows Olivia Ting, Antonella Mazzoni, and Selwa Sweidan + Vanessa Cruz to  the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship, a partnership between Arizona State University’s Narrative & Emerging Media Program and Leonardo CripTech Incubator! Based at the Haptics for Inclusion lab at the ASU California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, this 3-month fellowship is dedicated to the research and creative exploration of the intersections between haptics and disability. Harnessing innovative haptic technologies such as gloves, vests, and tactile actuators, fellows will employ the transformative power of touch to reimagine new possibilities for learning, creativity and accessibility in immersive storytelling. 

Touch Aesthetics Activation Images

Photography by Roz Kumari

A group of five people wearing masks are gathered around a colorful and furry textile object on a wooden floor. One person in a black dress makes peace signs with their hands while another with red hair leans over from a wheelchair to look at the object.
Two people are sitting on a wooden floor. The person on the right is speaking into a microphone while the person on the left, who is wearing a black dress and listens with their eyes closed. Both are wearing face masks.
A person with dark hair with purple highlights, wearing glasses, a black mask, and a black dress, sits on a wooden floor holding a microphone. They are looking down with their eyes closed.
A close-up shot of a person with long, dark, curly hair, wearing a white face mask and a green shirt. They are looking off to the left of the frame, and the top of a walker is visible behind them.
A side-profile shot of a person with short, bright red hair, wearing a black face mask and looking off to the right.
A person with curly brown hair, glasses, and a light blue face mask sits cross-legged on a yoga mat on a wooden floor with their eyes closed in a meditative pose.
A person with short, bright orange hair and a white 3M face mask sits cross-legged on a grey mat on a wooden floor. They are wearing a light-colored t-shirt with a graphic on it. In the background, there are inflatable objects.
A person with dark, curly hair, wearing a black face mask and glasses, sits in a wheelchair in a sunlit room with large windows. They are looking off to the right of the frame. Another person is sitting on a mat in the background.
A close-up shot of a person with a mullet hairstyle, wearing a black face mask and a black sleeveless shirt. They are sitting on a wooden floor, looking to the right.
A person with short, bright orange hair wears a white respirator mask and a cream-colored t-shirt with a graphic that says "DO NOT TOUCH". They are sitting on a grey mat on a wooden floor, looking to the right.
Two women are sitting next to each other. The woman on the left, wearing a grey polo shirt, is smiling and wearing a white mask that has an opening for her mouth. The woman on the right, wearing a floral dress and a black mask, is waving at the camera.
A group of people, some in wheelchairs and some seated on mats on the floor, are gathered in a large, sunlit room. They are all wearing face masks and appear to be in a workshop or class setting, with inflatable objects and camera equipment in the background.
Two people are sitting on a wooden floor with papers in front of them. The person on the left, with purple-streaked hair and a prosthetic leg, speaks into a microphone. The person on the right, in a green shirt, listens with their eyes closed. A walker is behind them.
Two men wearing face masks are sitting on mats on a polished wooden floor. The man in the foreground wears a blue shirt and baseball cap, while the man behind him has blond hair and wears a light blue button-up shirt.
Three people are relaxing on a large, orange, inflatable raft on a wooden floor. In the background, other people are seated, and there are large, inflatable, mushroom-shaped decorations. Everyone pictured is wearing a face mask.
Three people wearing face masks are lying on orange inflatable loungers in a room with wooden floors. They are looking at the camera, and their reflections are visible in a mirror behind them.
A person with long hair, wearing a black sleeveless shirt and black pants, kneels on a wooden floor while putting on a white VR headset. Next to them are large, inflatable green plants with yellow flowers
A close-up of a white sign on an easel. The sign has text and is titled "Blackout by Haptic Tads." A QR code is visible at the bottom right. A plant is to the right of the sign, and a desk with a laptop and a chair are to the left.
Two women wearing face masks are at a desk with a laptop. The woman on the left, with curly brown hair, is using the laptop. The woman on the right, with purple-streaked hair and glasses, is in a wheelchair and looks toward the right side of the frame. In the background, other people are in a large, open room.
The back of two women sitting at a desk and looking at a laptop screen. The woman on the left has long, dark hair with purple highlights and is in a wheelchair with a walker behind her. The woman on the right has long, curly brown hair and is showing something on a phone.
Two people are sitting on a grey couch. The person on the left is wearing a VR headset and a colorful floral dress and is holding controllers. The person on the right, wearing a yellow top and a face mask, is looking at them with a hand to their chest.
A wide shot of a large, sunlit event hall with polished wooden floors. Three people wearing face masks are visible. A woman in a patterned dress stands in the foreground, a man in a red shirt carries equipment in the middle of the room, and a man in a purple and yellow basketball jersey stands on the right next to a tripod. Inflatable decorations are visible in the background.
Two women wearing black face masks are sitting next to each other against a light green wall. The woman on the left wears a red shirt and a blue cardigan. The woman on the right, wearing a black top and a pink sparkly skirt, holds up a peace sign and a cell phone.

Touch Aesthetics Activation Video

2025 Fellows

A woman with long straight black hair past shoulder-length, brown eyes, and wearing a green, blue and black floral top.
Image credit: Olivia Ting 

Olivia Ting

Olivia Ting is a hard of hearing visual artist, designer, photographer, video projectionist, and pianist. She explores audial perception without hearing and the intersections of sound perception interpreted as speech, noise, and music (organized sound). Without her hearing aid and cochlear implant, she perceives nearly no sounds, so visuals stand in for the audio that she is familiar with, but hears and not hears. Formerly a pre med major at Pomona College, she went on to a second degree in graphic design at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. She worked for design and branding agencies in New York City for several years before returning to San Francisco, where her work expanded to collaborative video projections with dance choreographers and museum exhibits. She received her MFA Art Practice from U.C. Berkeley and is currently freelancing and developing new work reconnecting with her music background.

Olivia Ting aims to explore haptic emotions and memories during the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship

A black and white headshot of Antonella as she stands in front of a wooden wall, facing the camera and hinting a smile. Antonella is a white woman with long dark hair. She wears a dark t-shirt with a feather printed on it, and a necklace of a tribal sun.
Image credit: Antonella Mazzoni

Antonella Mazzoni

Antonella is an arts scientist and experiential designer, focusing on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of entertainment technology, experiential design, human perception, and immersive narrative media techniques.

She’s been working as a researcher across academia and the industry for over a decade, on many themes intersecting technology, the sciences and the arts. She holds a BSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Media and Arts Technology from Queen Mary University of London, where she researched creative ways to augment audiences' cinematic experience.

Her main areas of expertise are Experience Design, Immersive Storytelling + World Building, and HCI - in particular UX, Interaction Design, Cognitive Science, and Behavioral Psychology. Her research interests are in designing new cross-modal interactions for enhancing media and entertainment experiences, and investigating the role of narrative practices and storytelling within emerging technologies. Through her interdisciplinary research she emphasizes the power of using technology to create new engaging experiences and reshape storytelling.

Her acclaimed research work revolved around wearable technology and film studies, in which expressive haptic sensations accompanied mood music to enrich emotions in film &
entertainment. Her novel approach also aimed at offering Hard-of-Hearing audiences with an enhanced emotional cinematic experience, by providing a multi-sensory encounter with the emotions evoked by the film score through involving the sense of touch

Antonella aims to explore the use of haptic sensations as a new universal type of narrative form in digital storytelling during the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship

a photo of Vanessa, a chicana woman with caramel skin. She is leaning against a graffiti wall and on top of her tilting walker named Pluto. Her outfit gives dreamy-cyber-gothic-romantic vibes. She is wearing a flowy long sleeve mesh blouse with a digital design. Her black skirt with red flowers is slightly visible. Framing her is a metal looping bike stand]
Image credit: Whitney Browne
a photo of Selwa, an arab american woman with light skin, dark eyes, round face, and shoulder length wavy dark and gray hair. She is looking upwards, and is wearing a satiny purple face mask, while leaning to the right of the frame. A metallic prop is resting on her ear. She is outdoors, it is daytime and in the background are trees and green brush
Image credit: Courtesy of Artist

Vanessa Hernández Cruz + Selwa Sweidan

Vanessa Hernández Cruz (she, her, ella) is an interdependent Chicana Disabled dance artist, filmmaker, visual artist, poet & an Intersectional Disability Justice activist. She is from the unceded lands of the Tongva & Kizh lands colonially known as Los Angeles, California. She holds her BA in Dance Science from California State University Long Beach. In late 2024, she was an Access Movement Play (AMP) Artist in Residency. Earlier that year, she premiered an experimental contemporary dance solo titled ‘Soul Seeker' for the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition show 'Abundance’. This work later premiered at the new Disabled Art’s Mouthwater Festival in the fall 2024 at On The Boards. In addition, Vanessa self-produced & premiered an evening length at Highways Performance Space titled: Void Decryption ERROR; where she successfully live-streamed four QBIPOC Disabled artists on stage with her. 

Over the past few years Vanessa’s work has been shown nationally & internationally. In 2024 performed an excerpt of Jérôme Bel’s work ‘GALA’ at REDCAT, performed with Good Troublemakers, and she finished her Pieter Performance Space residency with a showing of a duration dance performance ‘Cyber Realms’. She was a virtual dancer for Kayla Hamilton’s work "How to Bend Down, How to Pick it Up” that premiered at The SHED in NYC in 2024. She was the recipient of the 2023 California Arts Council x The Center of Cultural Power Artist Disruptor Award. In 2023, she had two exciting dance solos that premiered in the summer: “Metal, Plastic, Skin” debuting at The Odyssey Theatre’s Dance Festival and “Exhale Static, Inhale Fumes” with her debut at The REDCAT’s NOW Festival. 

Her dance, visual artwork, and writings are often woven together to generate works that have influences of dark aesthetics, horror, abstractions, experimentation, technology, and storytelling that merges her Chicana Disabled experiences.
 

Selwa’s research has been published in the Internet Policy Review Journal, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Journal (AAAI), the Design Research Society (DRS), and as part of the International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII). She has presented research and performances at the College Arts Association (CAA); Design Indaba; Eyebeam, Culture Hub; Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC); Glendale Tech Week; Institute for Art and Olfaction; International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE); IXDA World Interaction Day; Society for Science, Literature and the Arts (SLSA); South by Southwest (SXSW); and VRLA. She has co-curated exhibitions and symposia including Beyond Embodiment, Clustering, DECOLONIALATHON, Performative Computation and Super Radiance. Selwa has been an artist-in-residence at PRAKSIS Oslo, Performing Arts Form in St. Erme France, a research resident at Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP), a SLOMOCO Virtual Artist-in-Residence, a collective resident at NAVEL, a postgraduate fellow at ArtCenter College of Design, an interactive design fellow at Fabrica, and was awarded “Best Overall” at the Microsoft Design Expo ’15. Her work has been exhibited and screened at Artificial Knowing, Biofiction Science Art Film Festival, Bevilacqua Gallery, Center Du Pompidou, Femmebit, Finnish Culture Institute of NY, HomeLA, Laband Art Gallery, Mandeville Art Gallery, Monte Vista Projects, Spring/Break Los Angeles, TheOther.online, University Arts Gallery at UC Irvine and as part of Oslo Culture Night in Norway. Selwa holds a BA from Smith College, an MFA (STEM) from ArtCenter College of Design and is currently a PhD candidate and Endowed Fellow in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice at University of Southern California.
 

Through this fellowship, Selwa Sweidan and Vanessa Cruz are exploring haptic desiring, and examining touch practices that contribute to Crip techno-imaginaries. Their collaboration seeks to address ways that touch encounters may foster expanded forms of access, alterity, consent, and intimacy.