NEXUS: A Tangible Multi-User Sensor-Based Telematic Novel Mixing-Interface for Multimedial Exploration

This paper explores the realm of telematic performance practice, interconnecting geographically disparate locations and performers through telecommunication technologies. Specifically, we focus on networked multimedia mixing and advance the field within the framework of third-wave human-computer interaction, emphasizing embodied interaction. Along with a detailed introduction of our Novel Interface for Multimedial Exploration, the NEXUS, we provide insights into our first use-case scenario, employing the NEXUS-NIME within a telematic performance context. Adapting and expanding on existing examples of dimension spaces, we introduce a novel Dimension Space for Phenomenologically Situated Interaction, which accounts for situated embodiment. It is employed in a dimension space analysis comparing the NEXUS with historical interfaces for networked musical and multimedial expression that incorporate multimodal interactions through tangible user interfaces. In doing so we demonstrate the NEXUS's role as a transformative multi-user tool and bundle of NIMEs, shifting sound engineering practices from one of transparency and social fidelity to one of hypermediacy, risk and respons-ability. Drawing on concepts from feminist new materialism and posthumanism, the NEXUS opens new avenues for rendering-capable, for exploring complex interdependencies between human and non-human actors becoming-with in telematic ecosystems.