M.U.S.H. Multi-User Sensorial Hallucination
A videosonic network installation by Eleonore Hellio & Joachim Montessuis

Text describing the BETA version 2004

Introduction

M.U.S.H. is a dual site transactive installation that can work between two distant locations in one city, two cities, two countries through a very specific high bandwidth bi-directionnal Internet connection. These type of networks (GEANT in Europe) opens new possibilities in the field of telematic art concerned with transcultural exchange. It may also work through point to point ISDN lines although this technology has gotten more and more expensive over the years. M.U.S.H. can also work as a dual local piece while inducing a similar telecommunicative sensorial experience. In this case, two separated spaces in one single location and the use of ethernet and analogic audio-video connections are necessary.

During DEAF festival, after testing an internet link between Steim, our second partner location in Amsterdam and the Van Nell Factory in Rotterdam, it was decided for technical reasons to privilege a local connection between two adjacent rooms in Rotterdam. Despite the difficulties, this choice unabled us to work at scale 1 for the first time with the electronics designer Stock. It gave us the time to really explore and experiment in the form of an open public laboratory in a way never possible before with many participants. It gave us the experience and the opportunity to anticipate all further developments and improvements for an advanced version. This summer 2005 residence at V2 LAB and the development we have accomplished are the result of the DEAF experience.

Description*

Each visitor enters a closed room and faces a black image on a video screen. The person is provided a wireless M.U.S.H. device, equipped with accelerometer sensors, when they enter. The room is quiet but as soon as the person starts to move around the  M.U.S.H. device, their movements controls the sounds and visuals. This exploration of the space causes a sound composition and works simultaneously as a synchronization tool for telecommunication between the two sites. The system captures each person's movements to generate a sound and visual "partition" in real time that becomes the "carrier wave" for telecommunicated experience.  M.U.S.H. is a digital collision space in which a chance is given to share an experience together. This will first depend on one's ability to fully explore and interact within its multi-sensory environment. The synchronicity of behavioral patterns is what may trigger the appropriate feed-back for a tangible link to occur. If both participants 'excite' the M.U.S.H. room at the same time, in the same manner, they will increase their chances of meeting each other through virtual space. The sound acts both as a subversive and immersive element. The image is considered both as place and language. A visual dialogue that doesn't follow the usual rules of videoconferencing will define the feeling of tele-presence or tele-absence.

The sound environment consists of different layers of sinusoids, infra-basses, drones and granulated samples that react to the movements of the device in terms of intensity, frequency and loudness. M.U.S.H.  offers the participants a complete stage for jamming with one another while a slow and minimal visual pulsation blends into the darkness of a screen betraying only few visual clues. Progressively, luminous flickering shadows, ghostly traces of a body, granular particules of an image, short and stroboscopic impacts, persistence of vision and distortions disclose the presence of the other participant as one conquers the system. This local image of the distant participant is controled by the local M.U.S.H device as well. Other visitors may watch the interactions as passive observers.

The participants are invited to play the main role in a ritual of videosonic cannibalism where senses and perceptions are blended and blurred by a telepresence system of communication. This concept underlies the physical experience of a mixed reality viewing the body as a symbolic space of resistance and assimilation. Who is going to consume the image and the sound of the other, and how? MUSH’s liquid aesthetics is symptomatic of the incorporation of medias.