Time-Body Study Experiment: VR Embodiment Experience

Time-Body Study is an experiment exploring the impact re-embodiment in virtual reality has on the boundaries of body, identity and self. In the experiment participants, wearing a virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD), are re-embodied in the body of a 7, 40 and 80-year-old person. Inspired by the classic Rubber Hand Illusion (Botvinick & Cohen 1998) and the work of Prof. Mel Slater (Barcelona University), The Time-Body Study creates the re-embodiment illusion by having a participant see his virtual hands being touched in the virtual space while, simultaneously and in perfect sync, his real hands are being touched, by a live performer. Both Botvinick and Slater’s experiments used this mechanism to demonstrate how easy it is to manipulate our body representation so that a subject can experience a rubber or virtual hand as his own. In Time-Body Study Daniel Landau adds narrative layers to the re-embodiment experience in an attempt to explore this cognitive mechanism on an emotional level. The audience get to see both the participant’s view of the virtual body (projected onto a large screen) and the live performer’s interactions. This gives the audience a unique view of the experiment demonstrating how the human body is effectively an evolving medium subjected to its technological environment. Background One of the central questions in cognitive science is how we experience ourselves inside a body that interacts continuously with the environment. In everyday life we experience our body as our own biological one that moves according to our intentions, obeying our will. There is a coherence in our perception of self and body. Our body seems to be a relatively stable entity: We look in the mirror every day and see reflected back the same body which signifies the same ‘self’. Though, naturally, the body does almost imperceptibly change through time, the idea that our body may be casually mutable seems counterintuitive. The publication of the classic Rubber Hand Illusion, that demonstrated how easy it is to generate in people the illusion that a rubber hand is part of their own body, was a significant turning point. Since then, there has been renewed and growing interest in the study of the brain’s body representation with significant work being done using virtual reality technology.