Museum of Human Touch (Book)

Museum of Human Touch is a speculative archive from a possible future where our relationship to technology has alienated us from our bodies so thoroughly that touch must be collected and stored for preservation. The book reads as the catalogue of a museum staffed by digital agents: a fragmented, almost anthropological record of extinct gestures, simulation reports of failed attempts to generate authentic hand-holding, indexes of lost touch and the new pathologies of contact.

It explores the uneasy synthesis of human and machine, and the corporate AI systems that commercialize human imagery and increasingly define how we understand the body, intimacy and connection. By imagining a future where touch has become rare enough to require preservation, the book asks readers to reconsider the value of their own physical experiences.

At The Museum of Human Touch, we are custodians of a vital heritage: the tactile memory of humankind. Our mission is the collection, categorization, and reintroduction of endangered forms of tactile expression, undertaken in order to safeguard the fragile possibility of human intimacy for future generations.

— from the Museum Mission Statement

Published by Dead Alive Press. The book was shown alongside the sculptures in The Museum of Human Touch solo show at Persons Unknown Gallery, Los Angeles, 2025.