Boxed Ego

Boxed Ego is a double trap for the Self. A peep-show box waiting in a corner of the exhibition space first captures the curiosity of the observer and then the observer himself. Although of an artistic flavor, from the research perspective this work is a preliminary experiment on the cognitive (and possible practical) aspects of artificial autoscopy (AS). In order to understand how artificial autoscopy can generate an out-of-body experience (OBE), we embrace the enactive approach to perception [1] and we further hypothesize that the sense of self, may be itself a second-order perceptual experience: that resulting not from the exploration of the world based on skillful mastery of the visual, tactile, proprioceptive or auditive sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs), but on exploring/acting on the world with skillful mastery of these SMC as well as the rules governing the relations (extended in time) between these SMCs. A first corollary of this hypothesis is that there may be different senses of self: at one extreme, those inextricably linked to each primal sense (and thus experientially ineffable), and at the other extreme, a more abstract sense of self that result from the knowledge of cross-modal contingencies. In between, there may be experiences rendering a more or less unified sense of self, which is precisely why this model seems to us ideal to explain OBEs. A second corollary of this view, is that attentional blindness may also pertain to the sense of self, a testable hypothesis.