Neurophysiology-based art in immersive virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) art often deals with issues of embodied interaction vs. the fantasy of disembodiment: on the one hand, unlike traditional desktop computers, VR allows full-body interaction; on the other hand, VR allows one to experience disembodied presence in an immaterial, abstract space. Our recent research projects allowed us to reach a new extreme of such disembodied VR experiences, where participants affected their virtual surrounding using their emotional state and, to a limited extent, using their ‘thoughts’. This scientific research gave rise to two science–art collaborations. In the first, a visual artist navigated in a virtual maze that he created, using only his ‘thoughts’; this experience inspired a set of art shows. The second project included floating inside an immersive VR environment, where the motion was based on electrodermal activity (‘sweat response’), and the content of the virtual environment was based on dreams purchased and modelled by the artist.