The first floor of the Ely Center of Contemporary Art was full of bright colors and bold shapes, the sounds of insects and cartoons, even a few smells. Melanie Carr’s installation exemplified the first category, with its simple geometry, friendly colors, and a shape that conveyed its pillowy texture. Touch this, the piece all but screamed — a message spelled out with notes on the wall, inviting visitors to use their hands. But this was an art exhibition at a gallery space, a place where, as children, we learn not to touch anything, ever. That’s why I hesitated for a comically long time, pushing against decades of learned behavior to navigate museums without bumping into anything, let alone reaching out to make contact with something. Finally, feeling a little like I did when I first jumped off a diving board as a kid, I put out my hand and touched the art. The material itself felt like I expected. The act of touching the art felt like hitting cool water on a hot day.Creating that effect is part of the point of Carr’s piece. ​“Over the past decade, my practice has centered on the interplay between active and passive viewing,” the artist writes in an accompanying statement. ​“I invite audiences to engage with my work physically, encouraging exploration beyond the visual to a full-bodied experience. This performative approach transforms my sculptures into dynamic interactions, emphasizing the body’s role in the act of perception.”It’s also part of the mission of ​“To The Touch,” a show curated by Deborah Hesse running now at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art at 51 Trumbull St. through Jan. 5 and featuring the works of artists Regan Avery, Marsha Borden, Melanie Carr, Grayson Cox, Leila Daw, Gangwisch, Gregory P. Garvey, Beth Klingher, Yin Mei, Dana Prieto, Ben Quesnel, and Cate Solari. ​“Immerse all your senses in an exhibition that brings together 12 artists who create high and low-tech interactive works that encourage participation, cooperation, and empathy. In this multisensory show, viewers are invited to engage directly and physically with the artwork in novel and surprising ways,” Hesse writes. There are multiple intentions behind creating a show that engages more than one sense. One is to invite a sense of play. ​“As a group, these works provide a fresh way to experience art that recall the friendly, non-competitive, team-building spirit of the 1970s New Games movement while also incorporating subversive strategies to reflect on current global environmental, political, and cultural concerns,” Hesse writes. But inclusion isn’t far from her mind, either. ​“The show also aims to welcome and empower those with sensory and other challenges by offering new ways to experience art.” Another element is at work as well: ​‘To The Touch’ invites the viewer to be directly involved in the artist experience and helps us break down the barrier between observation and action.The immersion begins as soon as visitors enter with building, with Regan Avery’s Infestation/Welcome In set up in the vestibule entrance. There’s the sound of crickets and low light, so it takes a split second to see the hordes of quite real-looking lanternflies thronging in the space. The crickets offer a sense of peace that is disturbed for anyone who puts on the headphones hanging on the wall. In them is only the sound of persistent chewing, of consumption.The piece examines ​“the complexities of the concept of infestation,” Avery writes. ​“This work uses spotted lanternflies to consider how humans behave when their health and security [are] threatened by a perceived invader. The spotted lanternfly is a planthopper indigenous to China. This insect has recently spread to the United States where its reproductive success and feeding habits have led it to threaten local cash crops.” The arrival of the lanternfly has been big environmental news, with the USDA regarding it unequivocally as a pest. Without completely opposing that view, Avery offers a more shaded angle. ​“Residents are encouraged to kill the creature on sight, a casual violence that reveals the anxiety of our perilous position on Earth,” the artist writes. ​“Mass killing of insects is a complicated ecological position to inhabit wholeheartedly. And the spotted lanternfly is exceptionally beautiful. My installation highlights the insect’s delicate beauty with paper replicas as it activates the discomfort of being closely surrounded by too many of an unwelcome visitor.” Buried in Avery’s less anthropocentric view on the lanternfly’s arrival in the United States is the humility of knowing that often humans have been the invasive species — to plants, animals, and in a sense, even to other humans. Talk about a complicated ecological position.In some parts of the gallery, the sense of whimsy is so strong that it looks almost like a playground. In Release, Ben Quesnel’s bop bags. he relates, ​“are sometimes used in therapeutic sessions with children who struggle with verbal expression.” They appear almost like safe bowling pins to barrel into. But they’re there literally to convey meanings. Written on them with ink only visible under UV lighting are ​“messages and pictures from participants” responding to ​“a series of drawing and writing prompts to encourage deep thoughts and feelings about emotional issues that have affected the participants throughout the pandemic.” Exercise and physical activity, therapy and artistic expression, can all be part of a self-care routine; by rolling them all together in a public art show, Quesnel shows how they can be used to build community, too.Marsha Borden’s hanging piece, meanwhile, is made of hundreds of single-use plastic bags, ​“a tiny portion of the estimated one trillion plastic bags used and discarded worldwide annually,” she writes. She emphasizes just how ubiquitous it is: ​“We eat, drink, and breathe much of the plastic we have collectively ​‘thrown away.’ Plastic is in our bodies. It is literally raining down on us, every day.” So why not also touch it in an art show? ​“Take a stroll through the constructed plastic rain shower,” she writes, with dry humor. ​“Gaze at the sparkle, shine, and oddly beautiful texture.… Take your time. Plastic isn’t going anywhere.”Leila Daw likewise has environmental issues on her mind. ​“These small works are based on experiences during a month-long residency in Iceland,” she writes. All together, the larger work is ​“a musing on the fragility of our political systems within our already fragile ecosystem.” She uses mixed media in her work; they’re not paintings, but tapestries and beadwork. In its ​“tactile physicality,” she writes, her methods are ​“appropriate to describing the tangible materiality of the natural world.”Viewers are encouraged (with clean hands) to touch even these pieces, that don’t cry out to be touched the way other pieces in the gallery do. Touching them creates a sense of continuity, a chance to understand Daw’s craft better and to literally feel what she was feeling, beneath her fingers, as she finished her art. As Daw suggests, it’s an activity designed to open a door. Touching artwork helps build empathy by bringing participant and artist closer together, and brings participants closer to one another. So too might empathy with the non-human world grow, by getting outside, hearing the wind through trees instead of buildings, and feeling something other than pavement beneath your feet.‘To The Touch’ runs at Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St., through Jan. 5. Visit ECOCA’s website for hours and more information.