Golden Nica winner "sensorium" by Project Taos seeks to create a Web site that allows one to sense the world in a variety of ways "sensorium" is designed to expand the meaning of the term "sense" from various viewpoints.

"sensorium's" key thematic concept is "sense." "sensorium" seeks to create a Web site that allows one to sense the world in a variety of ways "sensorium" is designed to expand the meaning of the term "sense" from various viewpoints. The true capabilities of the net do not just lie in mundane scenarios, such as virtual shopping at home, transmitting information or as a medium for expression, but rather in helping us sense such aspects of human activity as how and what we eat, the air we breathe, what are the relationships that we share with our family, other people and creatures. We hope that the net allows the audience to see the more important things in our lives.

Breathing Earth
We tend to believe the ground beneath us is stationary, yet it moves all the time. Indeed, it seems to be alive. The "Breathing Earth" offers a visualization of compressed earthquake data. Data is included from earthquakes that have occurred worldwide in the past 14 days. The contents take the form of a WWW site filmed with time-lapsed photography. Currently, on-line data is used from the International Database Center (IDC).

Web Hopper
"Web Hopper" is an interWeb site that enables you to visualize your Web hopping and that of other Net users. The interface shows your trail crossing the world as a red line and those of other users as blue lines.The "Web Hopper" translates http packet information about the IP address into latitude and longitude. When the http packets pass through the IWE Network Operation Center (NOC), the location information is visualized via a Java applet real-time base. To translate from the host name to the location information, a database on the host name to Latitude/Longitude page at Illinois University (Matt Gardner at the Pablo VR Group) was used.This interface shows countless visualizations of "just connected moments." You might be able to grasp the Internet status quo.

Net Sound
"Net Sound" translates nine different communications protocols into sound data based on network traffic data at the lab. (As ICMP request, RIP, NTP, FTP, HTTP, NNTP, NFS, X-window.)"Net Sound" is an outlet for the stetho system. This real-time system translates different communications protocols into MIDI sounds based on network traffic data (the TCP dump command). The original purpose of the stetho system was to support the management of networks. The system translates network traffic so that that sounds can be heard via telephone even in a non-computer environment.

Net Packet
This companion to "Net Sound" uses visual data instead of sound. It is Java programmed for real-time visualization.

Star Place
"Star Place" was launched with the idea of creating a site where visitors could experience the universal sense of time and space in their lives as opposed to cyberspace.

As we began to develop the site, we became aware of the knowledge common to everyone on the planet: the earth is flying through the universe. We do not experience the sensation of flying, but we know the Earth spins around the sun because of night and day and the seasons. The Earth's speed ¬ 30 kilometers per second ¬ is much faster than anything we can feel.

"sensorium" is the theme pavilion of the Japan zone in the Internet 1996 World Exposition (IWE '96). Now it will be going into a new phase as a non-profit Web site maintained by the team members with help from Japan's WIDE project (widely Integrated Distributed Environment ­ the early and largest inter-academic network of Japan. The chairman is Jun Murai).