Boxed EgoArtificial autoscopy for fun and work

Alvaro CASSINELLI and Masatoshi ISHIKAWAMeta-Perception Group

devices that alter perception

dap

Boxed ego

Autoscopy, hyper-stereo (miniaturized “avatar”) & time delay

I. Altered self-perception (body scheme, and “ego-location”)

• Pathological conditions (Alice in Wonderland syndrome, out-of-body experience, autoscopy, heautoscopy…)

• Experiments in cognitive neurosciences (inverted goggles, rubber hand, TMS, etc)

• Medially mediated perception (artistic experimentation with mirrors, video, art installations)

• Human-computer interfaces (augmented perception, sensory substitution systems, teleprescence)

Sensed presence and spatial distortions of

body size can be induced by TMS

Out of body experience: from phantom limb to phantom body?

• Phantom limbs can occur in non-amputated people

• OBEs have a distinctive experiential character

• a specific brain area involved (temporo-parietal junction)

Artificial OBE in a controlled environment: cognitive neurosciences

O. Blanke research at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, EPFL , Switzerland, (2007)

Artificially relocated body parts and telexistence

Haptic telexistence (Tachi Lab)

"Telesar" (Tachi Lab)

Eliciting a true sense of tele-existence may be key to performance here

Explorations of the self in the media arts: the magic of the mirror…

Dan Graham’s «Present Continuous Past(s)», (1974)

...point to a sensory-motor theory of the perception of “being” in time and space!

Bruce Nauman, «Live-Taped Video Corridor» (1970)

…beyond the mirror

II. But can the sense of self can be considered a modality of perception?

Perception of what? The body scheme, the body image

Phenomenology: there is something that it is to “be there”

(in the sense of the sensory-motor theory of perception)

Hypothesis: Probably (enactive) knowledge in all “classic” modalities of perception

(visual, tactile, propioceptive and auditory), but not enacted the perceived object, but rather to the fact that there is a perceiver!

Phenomenologically speaking, the felt self-presence (the “qualia” of being) is not an inference, but rather the knowledge you have that certain movements will affect sensorial input in a way compatible with the fact that you have a human body.

This SMC-based hypothesis can accounts for dislocated self-perception a phenomena.

Good grounding for practical design of devices that alter perception of the self.

But which sensory-motor knowledge is involved?

Augmented awareness on public places (personal orientation and elimination of blind spots)

Enhancement of training mirrors…

An example practical application: autoscopic display

“Altered” is a matter of degree: the self has changed enormously with technology, and will

continue to change (tranhumanism?)

Conclusion

“Sense of self” may result from an innate/learned capacity to enact sensory-motor knowledge and to recognize on these patters special egocentric features.

Therefore it can be altered by artificially manipulating:- the structure of sensory-motor contingencies for each modality of

perception and- the inter-modality contingencies (time correlations and delays!)

Sense of Self may suffer from “perceptual illusions” such as “filling-in” body schema, attentional “self-less”…

Devices that alter the perception of the self may enable a lot of experiments and have a lot of practical applications

Questions?