TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Of all the up-close individual viewing systems, the most extreme case of what we might call “multi-sensory simulators” is exemplary. It radicalizes the model and most clearly reveals the program: here aesthetic experience is comparable to immersion and navigation in a milieu covering the entire perceptual field.

Morton Heilig’s Sensorama Simulator is a partly open booth which holds a seat, two handles and a fixed headset viewing system with two eyepieces, two speakers and several openings for ventilation. Once seated and properly set up with the viewing system, the user is asked to insert a coin into the device and to select a film or, as its inventor says, an “experience” (of approximately three minutes, for a total of twelve minutes).