This article is structured around three art objects I created and presented during the "iJADE" Conference in 2019. Through the description and manipulation of these tactile objects, which are designed in a way that allows for ease of interaction, we arrive at the concepts of familiarity and strangeness, attraction and repulsion that underpin encounters with the art object, the other and the environment. In this article we will rediscover the sense of touch as our singular access to the environment and a means of perceiving closeness. We will also examine experiments with students in an effort to understand how the art object can be significant through its affective value, and explore the concept of private and public boundaries in search of a suitable atmosphere for intimate encounters. Finally, we will ask how the art object functions as a tool that allows our distinct sensitivities to meet through a shared sensory experience, the answer to which may be found in the notions of ritual and games, in order to come to a definition of the 'ethics of contact'.