The strange thing about touch is that it’s all abstraction. You’re translating physical behaviors into digital ones. Never is this more apparently than when we’re playing games, of course. When you throw you’re angry bird or cut the rope, your indicating to your mobile phone that you want one action to mean something. Sometimes, it makes sense; sometimes, it doesn’t. Either way, we simply buy into the myth that the designer has constructed for us.

Royal College of Art student Gabriele Meldaikyte turned those oblique gestures into a set of interactive exhibits for a museum. “There are five multi-touch gestures forming the language we use between our fingers and iPhone screens,” Meldaikyte told Dezeen. “This is the way we communicate, navigate and give commands to our iPhones.”

Originally from Lithuania, Meldaikyte is currently studying on Platform 17 of MA Design Products at London’s Royal College of Art, tutored by Ian Ferguson and Martin Postler. She will graduate in June.

Below: Tap gesture

Below: swipe gesture