Designing Intermodal Plurivocity

The expressive plurivocity of an artifact is often the outcome of the simultaneous presence of features that can be attributable to different sensory modalities. In this chapter, after introducing the definition of plurivocity with respect to both shape and the coexistence of expressive qualities within an artifact, the phenomenological Gestalt perspective on intermodal perception is discussed. Within this theoretical framework, perceptual properties attributable to each sense are regarded as properties of artifacts, independently of existing knowledge about sensory systems and the mechanisms processing physiological data. Finally, by examining the different types of interaction among the properties of artifacts, the chapter outlines guiding principles for the design of intermodal expressive plurivocity.