Sensual Communication in Hybrid Reality

Abstract

This paper focuses on the potential applications of hybrid reality in the cultural sphere, where media and technologies can be used for multisensory stimulation and interaction. We investigate the capacity of hybrid spaces to incite alternative states of consciousness, similar to what mystics, alchemists and shamans describe as a journey towards rapture (a state of overwhelming emotion). The two projects that we discuss here, GoToØ and T-Garden, explore the notion of sensual communication that occurs when the virtual and the physical intermingle in the same reality. The media become tangible and the senses distributed. Distancing ourselves from the modernist ideals of an independent mind, we strive towards embodied, actualised imaginaries, through which people navigate following a corporeal language.