In the provided context, “haptic (haptisch)” is used in relation to bodily perception rather than as a narrowly defined technical term. The texts around Passing emphasize that human perception is grounded in bodily experience, while AI lacks such physical embodiment. This contrast is used to think about how perception, sensation, and the body can be reconsidered through media and computational processes. Within this framework, “haptic” points to a mode of experience that is not limited to vision or hearing, but involves the body as a whole.
The discussion of train-window landscapes and motion parallax is especially relevant. As a viewer moves, depth is inferred from differences in apparent motion speed, allowing a flat visual field to be experienced as spatial and three-dimensional. The work also describes how sound and image become unstable in relation to the camera and microphone positions, producing a drifting sense of viewpoint, as if the observer’s sensory position were no longer fixed. This suggests a haptic dimension of perception: one shaped by movement, bodily orientation, and the felt instability of the sensing subject.
However, the context does not provide a formal definition of “haptisch” itself. It only indicates that the term is connected to embodied, sensory, and perceptual experience in the work’s conceptual framework.