Shin-ichi Takemura < takemura@blue.ocn.ne.jp   > from the Tohoku University of Art and Design (Japan) talked about Sensorium, a public sensory platform on the Net ( http://www.sensorium.org , there are also English pages).

Sensorium is an attempt to develop the potential of the Internet as new "doors of perception". It brings our senses on the Net. This design experience is unique to the Internet age. It is an alternative live digital museum. The speaker showed us the example of the breathing earth, a senseware to stimulate our senses. The Sensorium team expressed their wish to share a platform to extend our senses through the Net, without thinking of replacing our physical senses. It is senseware. The speaker showed then the example of Starplace, a live system that develops our sensations using the solar system always moving ("eyes meet stars"), implemented by simple Javascript. He returned to the example of Sensorium ("you are not who you where"). It is the sense of connectivity turning the Internet itself into content. He then gave the example of NetSound.

Hiroyuki Ohno < hohno@ohnolab.org > from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) gave the example of Stetho. It is possible to use various commands ("tcpdump" is one of them) information about packets transiting on the Net. Stetho converts packet information into sound. Instead of visualizing information on a screen the user hears it.

We went back to the first speaker with the example of NetSound, using protocols like http and ftp to produce sound. Sensing the Net makes it more tangible.

When asked if there are other experiences similar to Stetho, Hiroyuki Ohno answered that this approach is sound experience. He thinks there is something similar in US and proposed to use search engines with the key word "sonification". When asked how he got the idea of Stetho, he answered that he is a university teacher and his students use music keyboard at the laboratory for computers networks. Students try to integrate computers networks with music. They are using Stetho to manage computers networks. When hundreds of packets are coming on each screen it is easier to find if something is strange with sonorisation instead of just looking at the screens. Sonification is important for computers networks.

Thomas C. Agoston < agoston@jp.ibm.com > from IBM Asia-Pacific (Japan) showed us the site of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games ( http://www.nagano.olympic.org ). The site was multilingual (English, Japanese, and French). It provided timely game results. It was addressed to all kind of users. To provide information where and when desired, it used compound pages with dynamic content. Then the speaker gave us a guided tour of the site starting with the top page, going through the sports section, the countries section, the athletes section, the Nagano section, the fun/children section, ending with an origami instructions page. The novelty of the site was real time results, interactive multimedia features, comprehensive content, network technology. A description of the Nagano Games Web Server and of the Nagano Web Server followed. Statistical data were given with examples of daily traffic basic ratios. New challenges await the next Summer Olympic Games (2000).