Featured Image Credit: Adrian Deweerdt via UnSplash / Rockstar
Topics: VR
A recent study into the transformative and transcendental possibilities of virtual reality shows that these activities can "elicit responses indistinguishable from those associated with medium doses of psychedelics."
Cue a compilation of mums, dads and lads who have had one too many diving headfirst into walls because they truly believed they were suspended 70 stories above New York in their own living room. While this is undeniably funny, this isn't the sort of VR experience that David Glowacki - the artist and computational molecular physicist driving the experiment - is interested in.
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Fifteen years ago, Glowacki came close to death when he fell during a hike. But, when he surveyed his injuries, he saw that his body had become pure light, dimming slowly, and he was no longer afraid of what would happen to him.
In his project Isness-D, four to five people connect over the Internet with their headsets to enter this virtual space. Each person is represented as a cloud of coloured smoke with a ball of light where their heart would be located in their physical form. The group then moves closer and closer together in an activity called energetic coalescence, thereby blending their "bodies" so it is impossible to tell where one person starts and ends.
dissolving into energy & merging with others from david glowacki | IRL on Vimeo.
Recording 75 participants' emotional reactions to the energetic coalescence activity using established metrics from psychedelics research, Isness-D caused responses that were exceedingly similar to medium doses of psychedelics in scales like ego dissolution, communitas, and inclusion of community in self.
"I felt [when touching one another’s heart centres] the sweetest tenderness or pure, childlike love… stripped back, without any of the assumed layerings that we place upon reality and relationships… just to the absolute core, it was truly beautiful," said one participant. From this study alone, it appears that virtual reality experiences like Isness-D have a lot of potential for mental wellness.