“BirdMan VR: Binocular Rivalry and 4E Cognition” presented by Kim
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Immersion and VR (full papers)
Presentation Title:
- BirdMan VR: Binocular Rivalry and 4E Cognition
Presentation Subtheme:
- Ecologies of place
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
This paper is an artistic self-criticism for my artwork entitled BirdMan VR. This work was created in 2023 as part of the BirdMan series, which I have been creating continuously since 2006. BirdMan is both an artistic experiment and a cognitive science thought experiment about a hypothetical being with a combination of human vision and bird vision. The thought experiment begins with the question of what it is like to be a bat, based on Buddhist epistemology’s “five-fold (pañca skandha) and six-fold (ṣaḍ indriyāṇi)” and Thomas Nagle’s “What is it like to be a bat?”. A research paper on these works was published in 2015, BirdMan: Hybrid Perception.[1] This paper is an extension of that research, using the medium of VR and exploring issues of perception and consciousness from a 4E Cognition perspective, with a focus on binocular rivalry. What I want to see through the BirdMan Hybrid Perception art-science experiment is Qualia Landscapes. Qualia are controversial but important because they are deeply correlated with the individual’s body and are expected to bridge the gap between body and mind. They can also be the first step towards understanding the other.
