A Biometrically Connected VR experience that allows the participant to interact with multiple representations of what through proprioception are perceived as their own organs.
“Artistic activity, for its part, strives to achieve modest connections, open up (One or two) obstructed passages, and connect levels of reality kept apart from one another.”(Bourriaud, 1998)
The affordances of new forms of interactive art including virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) have implications for health that open new perspectives on embodiment. The title of this thesis project – Coenesthesia – is a term for the feeling of embodiment that arises from the sensorial processing of multiple stimuli from various bodily organs. Coenesthesia is a hybrid media art installation including a virtual environment produced with a game engine, a VR headset, sensor-actuators, sound, projection and sculptural components. This thesis incorporates the idea of art object as amenable object from Jeanie Randolph’s rereading of DW Winnicott, techniques from cognitive neuroscience studies extrapolated from the rubber arm illusion and the mirror illusion, an exploration of proprioception, synaesthesia, coenesthesia, surreality and the precognition of autonomic affect and how these might be used to form a revitalizing affect. This thesis supporting paper asks how hybrid media art can enable the exploration and affective engagement with one’s embodied interiority? This thesis answers this with the Coenesthetic Aesthetic, a multi-modal, multi-sensorial aesthetic that combines biofeedback with surreality in an effort to form a revitalizing affect. Coenesthesia, the installation acts as an example of what defines a Coenesthetic Aesthetic.
October 22, 2018
Coenesthesia showed with Bursting Bubbles, the art show associated with the Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival. Art Toronto wrote a bit about it:
Nestled in a simple cube of a room, Coenesthesia takes the interactive component of a VR experience a step further. I was greeted by an attendant who instructed me to stick on electrodes onto my body (like an EKG test). Once I connected to the electrodes and the headset, I was instructed to face the fuzzy ball on the floor (another piece called Frisson Portal which visitors are encouraged to hug!), after which I was promptly plunged into Coenesthesia’s universe.
It’s quite hard to describe everything in this universe. Massive planet-like objects float in outer space, surrounded by an even more massive ring made up of waves. I put my arms out and twist it in order to fly forward, and the first stop I make is to the red heart that is beating to the beat of my own heart, due to the electrodes. I fly into the heart, which is so giant it envelops me whole, and watch and hear my own heart beat – in my own heart. It’s an indescribably surreal sensation – to be outside and inside my heart at the same time. Embodied by my own heart, the extension of my body becomes hazy.
I fly through the other objects. Some are vague spheres of moving water, some are abstract shapes. There’s even a brain I can fly through. If not for the motion sickness and tired arms, I would have explored this universe for hours. In this universe, I am simultaneously my original physical body, a fellow planet, and a soaring star. Fragmentation in the most intriguing sense.
Sunny Kim
Thanks to everyone who made it out to see my biometric VR experience at Gamma Space! Extra thanks to the Ontario Arts Council, DamesMakingGames, Workman Arts and Trinity Square Video for their support in making this happen!
Claudette Abrams did an amazing job currating the show which also showed amazing work from Laura Kikauka, Kat Singer, Stephanie Avery, Janieta Eyre, Hanan Hazine, and Wendy Lu.
