Crystal Vibes feat. Ott: A psychedelic musical virtual reality experience utilising the full-body vibrotactile haptic synesthesia suit

Immersive media technology such as virtual reality provides the unique opportunity to place participants in multi-sensory hyper-connected universes where auditory and visual senses are intimately connected, and worlds can be built out of fractal geometries. Crystal Vibes is an artistic piece that combines spatial audio, endless fractal geometries, full-body haptic vibration feedback and sound-to-colour visualisation based on empirical biological functions related to human auditory and visual perception. Exhibited at Sundance Film Festival New Frontier in January 2017, and at Kaleidoscope Showcase Vol. 2 in 10 cities across the world, in this paper we report on insights from user feedback, as well as details of the technical implementation, including real-time rendering of seemingly infinite fractal-like structures, the haptic design philosophy and the sound-visualisation technique. Finally, we comment on the psychology and utility of such virtual environments.