Tadhg Charles
Touching Belfast explores how Belfast’s built infrastructure can be translated into tactile printed works through photogrammetry, 3D scanning, relief modelling and 3D printing. The project will create touchable manifestations of the city’s built fabric, including façades, textures, thresholds and architectural fragments. It investigates the underexplored relationship between digitalisation and touch, asking how digital media can be physically re-materialised as accessible, tactile representations of place.
The central question is what happens when Belfast’s built environment is not only photographed or modelled, but made touchable through the digital? The project will examine the underlying relationship between digitalisation, touch and representation. While digital media is often explored through screens, images, data and virtual space, its physical translation into tactile form remains underexplored. This project argues that printing, modelling and relief-making can offer new ways of knowing digital media through the hand, especially in relation to architecture, access and public memory.
Tadhg is an artist, lecturer and practice-based researcher working across architecture, digital fabrication, tactile access and exhibition-making. He is currently undertaking a PhD exploring how museums and exhibition organisations can create affordable tactile and multisensory access through photogrammetry, 3D capture, mesh handling and fabrication. His practice uses low-cost digital workflows, touch and material translation to question how digital media can become physical, accessible and socially meaningful.
Residency Period: August - November ‘26
