This sounds pleasant. David Resnick, an engineering student at UC Irvine, sought to create a project that engaged viewers’ senses of sight, sound and touch all in perfect harmony. The answer, clearly: a massage chair controlled by a Wiimote-wielding ballerina.
Undulating Flux was designed to put participants in a “flow state,” a psychological term for a state “in which one is in control of actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response.” Basically Resnick wanted to make his participants feel so good they didn’t even know they were feeling good.
To achieve that delicious flow state, he rigged up a chair with vibrating motors for the participant’s feet and hands, each side controlled by one of the dancer’s Wiimotes. Resnick worked with the dancer—or, as he deems her, the “vibrationist”—to make the haptic sensations the participant was feeling were representative of the movements that caused them. It all amounted to what his professor deemed a “new medium” of music, dance, and, vibration. In other words, with Resnick’s project, the medium is the massage. [David Resnick]
