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Chas de Swiet's online experiment, , recreates such everyday experiences of sounds misheard and objects transformed, to suggest how the worlds of miscomprehension and psychosis overlap.

'Playing' the site - which borrows from a computer game format - reveals the world of aural hallucination as one which is far closer, and far more familiar, than most 'non-mad' people like to think.

"The idea was really to recreate the experience of being 'psychotic' online," explains Chas, a digital artist with experience of schizophrenia, whose work was showcased as part of this year's on London's South Bank. "Coming from a sound background, it was quite interesting to try and recreate auditory hallucinations. But then I was keen to make it relatively realistic, not over the top, so that it makes people think: 'Ah, so this is what it's like' - and make them see that, in some ways, the experience is quite understandable."

The site begins light-heartedly, with a screen where the player can mix their own drum 'n' bass track using the sounds of a tube train. "It shows how tube noise can sound like drum 'n' bass if you're in an altered state - it's an experience I've had, and that lots of non-mad people have had coming out of clubs," explains Chas.

The player can then click on a tube map, which takes them to the Centrepoint building on Tottenham Court Road, where a big air conditioning duct is humming. The noise coming from the duct is mingled with the sounds of a choir, the intensity of which alters according to how close the viewer moves towards it.

"Again, this was something that happened to me when I was walking down the street late at night," says Chas. "I thought I heard an ethereal choir and tried to see where it was coming from."

The experience suggests how the mind in an altered state can transform the everyday world into something quite beautiful.

"The general vibe of the website is quite scary. But I wanted to show that some of these situations can be quite positive," says Chas. "It can be something interesting, gradual, not all a nightmarish experience. In a city like London, a lot of people have had that kind of thing happen. But it's happened to me in the country too - once I heard this amazing didgeridoo playing, but when I went to investigate, I found it was just a gurgle from a septic tank!"

Things begin to take a slightly more sinister turn on nutter.tv when the player clicks on other destinations on the tube map. At Clapham Junction, a train draws into the station and an announcer begins to reel off station names and security information which gradually becomes more and more threatening, as phrases such as "last warning", "must move" and "time, time" are thrown in.

"The words suggest the paranoia that the person in the game might be feeling, that the announcer's message is a warning to them personally, or that someone thinks they're a terrorist," explains Chas, who based the soundtrack on a real recording of a station announcer, which was then re-created using a voiceover artist. Words with a similar sound and number of syllables were overlaid onto the original phrases to make the final script.

"It's not massively coherent, but the confusion around what's actually misheard and what isn't is part of the point of it," Chas says.

The theme of terrorism and being watched - one which has resonance for all players, irrespective of their mental health experience - continues in the next part of the 'journey'. At Vauxhall Bridge, voices appear to be coming out of the MI5 building, while clicking on passing pedestrians, a police car and a police boat each activate other sound recordings, all of which carry warnings about being watched.

A meter on the screen monitors the player's anxiety level, which can be controlled using icons such as a pair of lungs to symbolise a deep breath, or pills to indicate taking medication. If the anxiety levels reach the limit, the screen fades to black, to imply that the player has jumped off the bridge.

"I really didn't want to do the stereotypical thing of having voices encouraging the user to kill themselves," says Chas. "OK, that happens, but not to everybody. People try to recreate the experience of hearing voices all the time in TV, theatre and film, and it's often in the form of persecutory voices coming through. But no one's tried to recreate the whole reality of that, and I didn't want to ham it up too much."

While TV and films have featured their fair share of 'voices', no one had previously tried to portray this experience online. In fact, Chas originally planned the project as a sound installation but, unable to get funding for it, he applied for a from the organisation , which helps disabled people develop their own digital arts projects, and was successful.

The first step towards producing nutter.tv was journeying around London with a minidisc recorder and a digital camera to take sound recordings and digital stills. Being a Londoner, Chas concentrated on places which were familiar to him but also had wider symbolic significance.

"I could have used any train or tube station, but there's something very iconic about Clapham Junction. And Vauxhall Bridge was quite tempting because MI5 is a real symbol of the paranoia in society generally."

Designer Edward Hill and programmer Nicholas Watton came on board thanks to a mail-out to all Chas's disability arts contacts, although they did not themselves have experience of mental health problems. Meanwhile, Theresa Rahman, Chas's co-producer, and Mat Holmes, who helped on sound, were fellow mental health service users.

Most of the content was fixed before the London bombings of 7 July, but the general post-9/11 environment was one which influenced the team's work.

"There is a vaguely political statement in there as well," says Chas. "It does reflect our current fixation on terrorism and how terrorists are the bogeymen that we're all encouraged to fear - but the site explores what happens if you start thinking you are that person, that bogeyman. That is one of the worst positions you can be in."

So far, more than a thousand people have played through the site, most of whom are within the disability arts world and have found it an inspirational experience. Some mental health service users have described it as being alarmingly close to the real thing.

However, Chas is hoping that non-disabled people will find nutter.tv equally affecting. "Probably most of the people I've mailed out to are service users, but really it's targeted at anyone who wants to look at it," he says. "I hope people will find it intriguing and informative, and that it might break down some barriers."