As a Menieres sufferer, I would describe the disease as follows. Meniere's disease is an inner ear disorder that causes intense vertigo or dizzy spells, along with loss of hearing. The first stage of an attack is an increasingly louder ringing and fullness in the affected ear. Next the victim begins to feel dizzy, much like motion sickness. As the attack escalates the dizziness gets worse until the victim begins to vomit. Cold sweats, hot flashes and a loud ringing in the ears accompany the dizziness. Relief comes only after the victim passes out from exhaustion. These attacks can last from 20 minutes to upwards of 7 hours and can occur at any moment and without any reason. The cause of Meniere's disease is unknown and there is no cure. More specific information and support can be found at menieres.org

Menieres affects so many of the senses, to such harsh extremes, that it is hard to explain, or describe, to someone who has not experienced it first hand. One example is to sit in an office chair that spins and have someone spin you for 2 minutes. Now stand up. That feeling of dizziness is similar to the dizziness with Meniere's. The problem is that the dizziness in this experiment goes away after a few seconds. With Meniere's it does not. This lack of control adds to the horror of this disease.

The main goal of this project was to promote the awareness of Menieres disease by creating an interactive experience that reproduced the sensations of the disease. I achieved this through the use of audio, video and space, in an installation type environment. The final piece was on exhibition at Gallery 2, which is located at 847 West Jackson Boulevard in Chicago, in May of 2001.

The goal of the original VM website was to gather ideas for the creation of this project. The following questions were posed to viewers. If you could create a environment that would recreate the symptoms of Menieres, what would it be like? How would you recreate these symptoms? This was a collaborative effort on the part of all Meniere's sufferers and their families and friends. The feedback and personal stories were tremendous!