The evolution of Rez

FROM THE SCREEN TO VR TO REZONANCE

Rez’s synaesthesia hasn’t been limited to just the screen, and we don’t just mean Rez Infinite’s leap to VR. In fact, when the latter made its debut, some might recall it premiered alongside what was dubbed the Synaesthesia Suit, a collaboration with Japanese media artist collective Rhizomatics, taking the concept of immersive haptic feedback to another level with a suit with 26 actuators that lets the wearer feel the textures of the visuals and sound pulsing through different parts of their body.

While Mizuguchi admits the suit was purely for promotional and marketing purposes, he decided to work with Rhizomatics again in a brand-new work that transforms Rez into a real spatial experience. Rezonance is an installation as part of a larger audio-visual exhibition called Virtual Realms, which has Mizuguchi as a guest co-curator, with other installations including interpretations of games like Dreams, Death Stranding and Rime.

Rather than a single-player experience,

Rezonance has up to four participants where each becomes a ‘traveller’ holding a haptic sphere. Sort of resembling the Rez player’s Zero Form, the spheres react to the light and sound in the space in connection with the other spheres – depending on where and how you move, the lights, visuals, sounds and haptics all change.

Virtual Realms is currently exhibiting at the Artscience Museum in Singapore, although pandemic restrictions have meant a lot of challenges in getting it set up

– even Mizuguchi has been unable to try it himself. However, the exhibition intends to tour internationally, assuming conditions improve in the real world, and as the project’s a collaboration with London’s Barbican Centre, it’s almost certain to make its way to these shores in the near future. In that time however, we could find Rez evolving once again, as Mizuguchi also teased that they had made a synaesthesia chair!