10.54103/ai/18458
In the following essay, I consider if and how VR’s uncanny ability to create an illusion of presence and generate a sense of body ownership might be used to go beyond our anthropocentric perspective, towards non-human experiences. By adventuring outside the domain of human experience, my goal is to address the affordances and limitations of VR’s illusionistic potential. Knowing full well that certain economic pressures preclude artists from pursuing the kinds of provocations I describe in this essay, I nevertheless invite readers to follow along as I explore alternative potentialities of contemporary VR. Specifically, I approach VR here in the hopes of finding ways of engaging with different bodies, spaces, and realities, even if illusorily.
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Philippe Bédard
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Adventures beyond anthropocentrism in virtual reality art
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Philippe Bédard
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Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., “The Proteus effect: the effect of transformed self-representation on behavior,” Human Communication Research 33, no. 3 (2007): 271-290, https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650208330254.
Adventures beyond anthropocentrism in virtual reality art
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1
                Adventures beyond
                anthropocentrism
in virtual reality
by Philippe Bédard
                          art
            Virtual Reality
                     Illusion
                     Anthropocentrism
                     Umwelt




                              Issue №2 Year 2022
                              → Just an illusion? Between simulation,
                              emulation, and hyper-realism
                              Edited by Pietro Conte
                              and Lambert Wiesing
Adventures beyond
anthropocentrism in virtual
reality art
PHILIPPE BÉDARD, McGill University – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4100-5249
https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/18458



“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unpreju-
 diced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of
 everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an
 adventure of perception”1
Abstract                      In the following essay, I consider if and how
                 VR’s uncanny ability to create an illusion of presence and
                 generate a sense of body ownership might be used to go
                 beyond our anthropocentric perspective, towards non-hu-
                 man experiences. By adventuring outside the domain of
                 human experience, my goal is to address the affordances
                 and limitations of VR’s illusionistic potential. Knowing full
                 well that certain economic pressures preclude artists from
                 pursuing the kinds of provocations I describe in this essay,
                 I nevertheless invite readers to follow along as I explore
                 alternative potentialities of contemporary VR. Specifically, I
                 approach VR here in the hopes of finding ways of engaging
                 with different bodies, spaces, and realities, even if illusorily.




Keywords         Virtual reality          Illusion        Anthropocentrism                Umwelt
To quote this essay: P. Bédard, “Adventures beyond anthropocentrism in virtual reality art,” AN-ICON.
Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433] 2 (2022): 89-112, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/18458

        1 S. Brakhage, “From Metaphors on Vision,” in P.A. Sitney, ed., The Avant-Garde Film: A
        Reader of Theory and Criticism (New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1978): 120.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                  89                                         AN-ICON
                                Introduction

                             Many things have changed between the origi-
               nal heyday of virtual reality (VR) in the 1980–1990s and the
               current revival of the technology since the early 2010s. But
               while today VR might benefit from the leaps and bounds
               computers and graphic technologies have witnessed in
               the intervening decades, and while it might enjoy greater
               commercial success than ever before, I often feel our imag-
               ination around the kinds of experiences enabled by VR has
               suffered somewhat. We are far removed today from Mere-
               dith Bricken’s suggestion that in VR: “You can be the mad
               hatter or you can be the teapot; you can move back and
               forth to the rhythm of a song. You can be a tiny droplet in
               the rain or in the river.”2 Likewise, we seem to have strayed
               from Jaron Lanier’s proposition that in virtual reality, “you
               can visit the world of the dinosaur, then become a Tyran-
               nosaurus. Not only can you see DNA, you can experience
               what it’s like to be a molecule.”3 While Jay David Bolter
               and Richard Grusin use these two quotes to highlight the
               illusion of “perceptual immediacy”4 of immersive virtual
               reality experiences, I see in these statements something
               else entirely more interesting: the idea that VR might give
               us experiences that far exceed the limits of human under-
               standing.
                             In the following essay, I consider if and how
               VR’s uncanny ability to create an illusion of presence and
               generate a sense of body ownership might be used to go
               beyond our anthropocentric perspective, towards non-hu-
               man experiences. By adventuring outside the domain of
               human experience, my goal is to address the affordances

      2 M. Bricken, “Virtual worlds: no interface to design,” in M. Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First
      Steps (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1991): 363-382, 372.
      3 S. Ditlea, “False starts aside, virtual reality finds new roles,” New York Times (March 23,
      1998): 97.
      4 J. Bolter, R. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
      2000): 22.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 90                                          AN-ICON
               and limitations of VR’s illusionistic potential. In so doing, I
               also aim to explore how VR might be thought of as more
               than a means to foster empathy for other human beings,
               whatever the purpose for that endeavour might be.5 This
               allows me to discuss immersive technologies and experi-
               ences in a context devoid of the problems typically asso-
               ciated with discourses around the concept of “empathy
               machine.”
                             I begin this essay by addressing the illusion of
               presence in VR, specifically as it relates to our experience of
               body-space relations in physical reality. I start by address-
               ing what I argue to be the fundamental anthropocentrism
               of VR’s dominant mode of experience. This crucial detour
               has me discussing whether VR is capable of representing
               non-human modes of being in the world. Necessarily, this
               also means addressing earlier thought experiments in the
               field of psychology, biology, and philosophy that sought to
               question “what it is like to be” something other than human.
               Having done so, I then consider whether VR might have the
               ability to give us access to non-human realities, or whether
               it is limited by a fundamental anthropocentrism. Finally, I




       5 On the issue of empathy in VR, see J.H. Murray, “Not a film and not an empathy machine,”
      Immerse (October 6, 2016): https://immerse.news/not-a-film-and-not-an-empathy-machine-
      48b63b0eda93, accessed January 10, 2023; S. Gregory, “Immersive witnessing: from
      empathy and outrage to action,” WITNESS blog (2016), https://blog.witness.org/2016/08/
      immersive-witnessing-from-empathy-and-outrage-to-action/, accessed January 10, 2023; G.
      Bollmer, “Empathy machines,” Media International Australia 165, no. 1 (2017): 63-76, https://
      doi.org/10.1177/1329878X17726794; R. Yang, “If you walk in someone else’s shoes, then
      you’ve taken their shoes: empathy machines as appropriation machines,” Radiator Blog (April
       5, 2017), https://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2017/04/if-you-walk-in-someone-elses-shoes-
      then.html, accessed January 10, 2023; H. Farmer, “A broken empathy machine,” Immerse
      (September 30, 2019), https://immerse.news/a-broken-empathy-machine-can-virtual-reality-
       increase-pro-social-behaviour-and-reduce-prejudice-cbcefb30525b, accessed January
      10, 2023; P. Roquet, “Empathy for the game master: how virtual reality creates empathy for
      those seen to be creating VR,” Journal of Visual Culture 19, no. 1 (2020): 65-80, https://doi.
      org/10.1177/1470412920906260; L. Nakamura, “Feeling good about feeling bad: virtuous
      virtual reality and the automation of racial empathy,” Journal of Visual Culture 19, no. 1 (2020):
      47-64, https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412920906259; G. Bollmer and K. Guinness, “Empathy
      and nausea: virtual reality and Jordan Wolfson’s Real Violence,” Journal of Visual Culture 19,
      no. 1 (2020): 28-46, https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412920906261.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                  91                                           AN-ICON
               look at experiments relating to illusions of body ownership
               in VR, specifically as they relate to non-human bodies.
                             As will become abundantly clear over the
               course of this essay, my goal is speculative—perhaps even
               provocative—rather than earnest. I write this text as an
               exercise in exploring what I perceive to be a bias towards
               anthropocentrism in VR, a medium which has so often been
               lauded for its ability to simulate otherwise impossible real-
               ities.6 Readers may also see this as a call to action to VR
               designers and consumers to open their minds to the pos-
               sibilities offered by contemporary immersive technologies
               beyond those practices that currently dominate the market.
               Knowing full well that certain economic pressures preclude
               artists from pursuing the kinds of provocations I describe
               in this essay, I nevertheless invite readers to follow along
               as I explore alternative potentialities of contemporary VR.7
               Specifically, I approach VR here in the hopes of finding
               ways of engaging with different bodies, spaces, and real-
               ities, even if illusorily.

                                 Virtual reality environments: immediacy
                                 and presence

                            It has become something of a truism to recog-
               nize that VR is able to foster a sense of presence, that is,
               the impression of “being there” in a virtual environment dis-
               tinct from the physical environment that one’s body is also
               occupying. Or, as Mathew Lombard et al. put it, presence

       6 I maintain that VR is currently driven by profoundly anthropocentric forces, despite the
      “anti-anthropocentric drive which,” according to Andrea Pinotti, “currently characterises
       not only the VR world but contemporary visual culture, in various mediums, more
       generally.” A. Pinotti, “What is it like to be a hawk?,” in Y. Hadjinicolaou, ed., Visual
       Engagements: Image Practices and Falconry (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020): 30-47, 44, https://
       doi.org/10.1515/9783110618587-003. See also R. Grusin, The Nonhuman Turn (Minneapolis:
       University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
       7 I also want to recognize that there are the effects of VR are not currently fully known and
       that much more work must be done to ensure current VR technologies are accessible and
       ethical. These pressing issues certainly deserve more attention before we can move towards
       more elaborate explorations of the outer limits of VR.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 92                                          AN-ICON
              describes, “the perceptual illusion of non-mediation.”8 In
              this context, the perceived lack of mediation is predicated
              on VR’s ability to foster a convincing illusion of a space
              that reproduces the way we see the world in our daily lives:
              as a three-dimensional volume in which our bodies can
              move and act. And while on their own the affordances of
              head-mounted displays (HMD) could be used to create any
              number of effects and illusions, the dominant practice of
              contemporary immersive media has been to reproduce our
              habitual modes of (visual) perception: looking ahead from
              an upright position through a pair of eyes which we can
              move around (either in their orbits, by moving our head, or
              our body) to see the surrounding environment.
                            In an earlier essay, I described VR as inherently
              subjective, following Jonathan Crary’s incisive discussion
              of “subjective vision.”9 By extension, I would also argue its
              default mode of experience–that for which it was designed
              and that which is dominant to this day–is also intrinsically
              anthropocentric. This is because “subjective,” in this con-
              text, refers to the idiosyncrasies of human vision.10 By the
              same token, I describe an apparatus which relies on these
              unique and fallible qualities of perception as subjective. In
              the case of VR, the HMD hinges upon the following sub-
              jective qualities of human vision: its binocularity, its “ego-
              centric” perspective, and the individual’s ability to move
              their point of view on the world through six degrees of
              freedom of movement along three dimensions. Here, ego-
              centrism describes an approach to body-space relations



      8 M. Lombard, T. Ditton, “At the heart of it all: the concept of presence,” Journal of
      Computer-Mediated Communication 3, no. 2 (1997), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.
      tb00072.x.
      9 P. Bédard, “La machine subjective? Les appropriations cinématographiques des dispositifs
      immersifs contemporains,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 28, no. 1 (2019): 66-92, 74,
      https://doi.org/10.3138/cjfs.28.1.2019-0012; J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision
      and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1992).
      10 See again J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the
      Nineteenth Century.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                               93                                        AN-ICON
               which take the individual as a point of reference.11 In other
               words, the egocentric perspective considers the human
               body as a “pivot around which the three dimensions of
               spatial extension arrange themselves and from which they
               ultimately proceed.”12 This could just as easily be called
               anthropocentric.
                             I continue to subscribe to the idea that VR’s
               apparatus and the default mode of experience it proposes
               are subjective, egocentric, and anthropocentric. That is
               because in most cases, the illusion of presence fostered
               by immersive virtual environments plays off this charac-
               teristic centrality of our body in our perception of space.
               Head-mounted displays become viewports into different
               and often completely fantastical realities, but these spaces
               are still explored from an egocentric perspective, with the
               body as invariable centre of gravity. If we assume the goal
               of most virtual reality experiences is to create a satisfying
               illusion of presence in a virtual environment–whatever the
               purpose for that may be–it makes perfect sense why this
               strategy has remained so dominant. However, this is not
               the only avenue. As an example, a slew of recent (flat) vid-
               eo games have embraced the affordances of their medi-
               um’s monocular perspective to create fascinating optical
               illusions and truly impossible body-space relations. The
               worlds explored in Antichamber (Demruth, 2013), Superlim-
               inal (Pillow Castle Games, 2019), Manifold Garden (William
               Chyr, 2019), Spaceflux (Colin Ardelean, 2020), Hyperbolica
               (CodeParade, 2022), and Parallelia (SincArt Studio, 2022)
               exceed our natural conception of space by presenting all
               manner of physically impossible environments: non-Euclid-
               ean, hyperbolic, fractal, etc. In so doing, they draw more
               inspiration from M.C. Escher’s depictions of space than

      11 W.R. Sherman, A.B. Craig, Understanding Virtual Reality: Interface, Application, and
      Design (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 2003): 296.
      12 E.S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California
      Press, 1997): 208. Emphasis added.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 94                                          AN-ICON
               from what we find in Leon Battista Alberti’s theorization of
               renaissance perspective. What if VR were to also stray from
               the beaten path and indulge in such perspectival fancies?
                            In the contemporary immersive media land-
               scape, precious few experiments with non-anthropocen-
               tric spaces have surfaced–at least to my knowledge.13 In
               mid-2020, Diego Montoya shared Spacetime, which he
               described as a “special relativity VR simulation.” The ex-
               periment allows users to explore a room where the speed
               of light is much slower than usual: “You can experience
               space contraction, time dilation and light Doppler effects
               as you move”14 (Fig. 1a and 1b). Among various physical
               distortions the experience enables–all of which are impos-
               sible to encapsulate in written form–the designer explains
               that “[t]he world feels very ‘wobbly’ when moving very close
               to the speed of light, almost liquid.” While space remains




                                                  Fig. 1a




      13 I discuss the limits of any analysis of contemporary virtual reality in P. Bédard, “La
      machine subjective? Les appropriations cinématographiques des dispositifs immersifs
      contemporains.”
      14 D. Montoya (@diego_montoya _), “I built a special #relativity VR simulation for @oculus
      Quest, where the speed of light c is much lower than usual. You can experience space
      contraction, time dilation and light Doppler effect as you move. 1/n,” Tweet, August 7, 2020,
      https://twitter.com/diego_montoya_/status/1291745102700765184, accessed January 10,
      2023.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 95                                          AN-ICON
                                                                     Fig. 1a and 1b. Diego Montoya,
                                                 Fig. 1b                           Spacetime, 2020

              three-dimensional in Spacetime, the user’s relations to that
              space far exceed the limits of our habitual modes of per-
              ception. With that said, I would hesitate to say that they
              exceed anthropocentrism, since the transformations that
              space undergoes throughout the experiment result from
              the user’s movements. Space is not transformed. Our per-
              ception of it is.
                             As with the earlier quoted videogames, Mon-
              toya’s project is the exception rather than the norm. Indeed,
              I still believe that as long as VR remains tied to the three
              or six degrees of freedom model of spatial engagement
              which takes the body as its centre, there is little it can
              do to avoid this egocentric mode of experience. With that
              said, nothing is keeping VR designers from creating virtual
              environments which are abstract rather than representa-
              tional.15 In other words, perhaps the solution to exceeding
              anthropocentric perspectives in VR might be to reject the
              notion of “perspective” altogether. However, doing so might


      15 An example I recently encountered would merit further attention in this regard. In
      Lockdown Dreamscape (Nicolas Gebbe, 2022), an innovative visual process was used to
      distort the image such that objects seemed to meld into one another. A slow movement
      through the distorted space led me to discover novel spatial relations. The experience was at
      once nauseating and thrilling.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                96                                          AN-ICON
               require more nuanced explorations of the affordances of
               virtual bodies. It might also ask that we question “what it
               is like to be” non-human, and whether VR is at all capable
               to furnish an answer to that question.

                                 What it is like to be [              ]

                           Whether it has been asked about animals, in-
              sects, or “things” in general, the question of “what it is like
              to be” this or that–whatever it may be–recognizes that our
              perspective as human animals is limited and distinct enough
              from other forms of being to preclude us from knowing or
              even understanding them.16 The reality behind this seem-
              ingly impassable chasm between ourselves and others is
              made clear through the concept of Umwelt, as theorized
              by Jakob von Uexküll. While it is true that all things (living
              or otherwise) occupy the same physical reality, Von Uexküll
              introduces the notion of Umwelt to suggest that all beings
              do not necessarily share the same environment or world.17
              The sensorial attunement of different animals varies to such
              a degree that the very meaning of “world” differs from one
              creature to another.
                           The word Umwelt can be translated as “self-cen-
              tred world.” This suggests the inherently subjective or
              egocentric nature of a given entity’s particular version of,
              and relation to, a world. This interpretation of Umwelt as
             “self-centred” or “subjectively-perceived” world is made
              even more evident when looking at the notion of subjectivity
              itself, understood here as that which is exclusive to a given




      16 This has far-reaching implications within debates on the notion of empathy in virtual reality.
      17 J. von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with A Theory of Meaning
      (1934), trans. J.D. O’Neil (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). The ties between
      von Uexküll’s Umwelt and VR have been highlighted by Andrea Pinotti in an illuminating
      chapter. See Pinotti, “What is it like to be a hawk?”

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 97                                           AN-ICON
               individual (i.e., subject).18 Indeed, as Maike Sarah Reinerth
               and Jan-Noël Thon define it, “subjectivity” designates that
               to which an individual has privileged access. While this
               definition of subjectivity does satisfyingly describe the ex-
               clusive character of Umwelt, the parallel breaks down when
               we realize subjectivity is most often discussed in terms of
               the unique way in which a given subject “sees” things. The
               reason for this breakdown has far-reaching implications,
               specifically when it comes to the non-anthropocentric aims
               of this essay.
                             Where the concept of Umwelt shines and where
               the questions of “what it is like to be” something other than
               human come into play is precisely when the human sen-
               sorium–of which sight is often taken to be the most privi-
               leged example–is no longer sufficient. Von Uexküll with his
               famous study of the tick, Thomas Nagel with his example
               of the bat, and Ian Bogost in his Alien Phenomenology all
               focus on the worldly experience of insects, animals and
               things that are commonly understood as blind–that is, when
               sight is understood from an anthropocentric perspective.19
               What drives these thinkers, then, is precisely to understand
               how these creatures sense, navigate and exist in a version
               of the world that is completely different from that of hu-
               mans, even though we might inhabit the same spaces at
               any given time. How does the world of the bat differ from
               ours when its primary mode of experience is defined by its
               use of echolocation? How is the tick’s experience of the
               world influenced by its reliance on sensing the heat, fur,
               and butyric acid that signify the presence of its main prey,
               namely mammals? How different is the world for things

      18 M.S. Reinerth, J.N. Thon, eds., Subjectivity Across Media: Interdisciplinary and
      Transmedial Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2017). For a more sustained discussion
      of subjectivity in VR, see P. Bédard, “La machine subjective? Les appropriations
      cinématographiques des dispositifs immersifs contemporains.”
      19 T. Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?,” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 435-450,
      https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914; I. Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, or, What It’s Like to be a
      Thing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 98                                          AN-ICON
              whose very mode of existence would even preclude us
              from describing them has “experiencing” the world?
                            “When we ask what it means to be something,”
              Bogost summarizes, “we pose a question that exceeds
              our own grasp of the being of the world.”20 In brief, these
              ask that we set aside our privileged modes of experience
              for a moment and engage–even if imaginatively–with other
              realities parallel and equal to our own. My interest in ask-
              ing these questions in the context of an essay on virtual
              reality, then, comes from the fact that I see it as a tool for
              exploring and perhaps even exceeding the limits of anthro-
              pocentric perspectives.21 Indeed, while Reinerth and Thon
              remark upon the impossibility of accessing the subjectivity
              of others per se, the editors also suggest that media of
              all kinds (from literature, to movies, to games, etc.) can
              succeed in fostering a sense of intersubjectivity. This pro-
              cess could also be called empathy, namely “the ability to
              share and understand the experiences of others,” or, as
              Kate Nash defines it, “an affective response grounded in an
              imaginative engagement with the experience of the other.”22
              Whether we call it intersubjectivity or empathy, the belief
              behind these concepts is that different media can make
              use of their unique affordances to suggest to users how a
              given character might subjectively perceive a given event
              or experience. Can VR overcome its fundamental anthropo-
              centrism and help users imaginatively project themselves
              in the experiences of others, precisely when these exceed
              their habitual range of possible experiences?




      20 I. Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, Or, What It’s Like to be a Thing: 30. Original emphasis.
      21 Pinotti might say that this desire to exceed anthropocentrism is itself anthropocentric, as
      it posits humans as having an exceptional capacity to access other modes of being in the
      world, which other creatures do not possess. See Pinotti, “What is it like to be a hawk?”.
      22 H. Farmer, “A broken empathy machine,” K. Nash, “Virtual reality witness: exploring the
      ethics of mediated presence,” Studies in Documentary Film 12, no. 2 (2018): 119-131, 124,
      https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2017.1340796.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                99                                           AN-ICON
                                 Accessing non-human realities through
                                 technology

                            An initial response to this last question might
               be that it cannot. Because VR HMDs are (predominantly)
               audiovisual devices and because they are tuned to the hu-
               man sensorium, they cannot, by definition, make us see and
               hear more than what our eyes and ears can perceive nor-
               mally.23 As Andrea Pinotti adroitly explains, such attempts
               to represent non-human realities through technology:

[...] cannot patently hope to escape Nagel’s caveat. Since they are
visually rendered on a screen, a compound-eye vision, a left-right-
eye independent vision or an infrared vision will always be visions
processed by a human eye-brain system. Human species-specific
organisation operates as a physiological and phenomenological a
priori that cannot simply be bypassed. This is, of course, true also
for any sort of VR simulation of non-human ways of experiencing
the world: they all ultimately have to be processed by such human
a priori.24
                            This makes it seemingly impossible for HMDs
               to exceed our typical senses of sight and hearing, to say
               nothing of being able to use it to go beyond our ordinary
               perceptual habitus and perceive the world as a bat, tick, or
               other creature might. But does it mean VR cannot help us
               imagine what the world might look like to a different being?
                            The fact is that we already use tools in our dai-
               ly lives that make visible to us phenomena to which our
               eyes and ears are not sensitive. The clock makes visible

      23 To that effect, “[David] Eagleman has noted that the part of the electromagnetic spectrum
      that is visible to humans is less than a ten-trillionth of the electromagnetic field, and therefore
      much goes undetected in our lives apart from a ‘shockingly small fraction of the surrounding
      reality.” L. Jarvis, “Body-swapping: self-attribution and body transfer illusions (BTIs),” in
      Immersive Embodiment: Theatres of Mislocalized Sensation (Cham: Springer International
      Publishing, 2019): 99-154, 113. See also D. Eagleman, “The Umwelt,” in J. Brockman, ed.,
      This Will Make You Smarter (London: Doubleday, 2012): 143-145.
      24 A. Pinotti, “What is it like to be a hawk?:” 46.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                  100                                           AN-ICON
               the passage of time, while other instruments transform a
               range of different extrasensory stimuli into visible data (e.g.,
               spectrometer, barometer, Geiger counter, Magnetic Res-
               onance Imaging scanner, etc.). Through these tools, we
               can gain access to phenomena that are strictly speaking
              “invisible,” yet which become visible all the same thanks to
               the appropriate apparatus. Having been made visible, these
               phenomena are not necessarily legible to all. As Don Ihde
               explains, the relation with the world in which we enter when
               using such tools is hermeneutic, meaning it requires that
               we possess the knowledge and skills necessary to interpret
               the data presented to us through these instruments; one
               must know how to speak the machine’s language, and to
               read the world through it.25
                             Thinking of VR as a tool to engage hermeneu-
               tically with aspects of the world which we cannot natural-
               ly perceive is one possible avenue for thinking of it as a
               way to exceed the anthropocentric perspectives to which
               it has generally been relegated. We can see traces of this
               approach at play in several projects by the artist collective
               Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF), notably in In the Eyes of
               the Animal (2015), Treehugger: Wawona (2016), and We
               live in an Ocean of Air (2018). In each of these projects,
               the artists use “terrestrial laser scanners” to create what
               are commonly known as “point clouds.” The density and
               colour of these clouds can be changed to create more or
               less detailed pointillist representations of physical spaces.
               MLF uses these to translate ways of “seeing” or being in
               the world that are in excess of human understanding. The

      25 “Hermeneutic relations,” Evan Selinger explains, “do not amplify or replicate the body’s
      sensory abilities; instead, they engage our linguistic and interpretative aptitudes. In this
      context, technologies that facilitate hermeneutic relations are best understood as being ‘text-
      like’; their effective utilization requires interpretation through the activity of reading.” E. Selinger,
      Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde (New York: SUNY Press, 2012): 5. An
      example that is closer to art and illusion might be anamorphosis. To see the anamorphosis
      hidden in an image, viewers must know how to position themselves in such a way as to reveal
      the image. See D.L. Collins, “Anamorphosis and the eccentric observer: inverted perspective
      and construction of the gaze,” Leonardo (1992): 73-82, https://www.jstor.org/stable/i270958.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                    101                                              AN-ICON
             effect lies halfway between scientific imagery and impres-
             sionism, as sparse arrays of point clouds leave much to the
             viewer’s imagination. In the Eyes of the Animal, for example,
             puts its viewers in the eyes of four different animals and
             insects (owl, frog, dragonfly, and mosquito), each with its




                                                                Fig. 2a




                                                                Fig. 2b
                   Fig. 2a and 2b. Marshmallow Laser Feast,
                              In the Eyes of the Animal, 2015

             own way of perceiving a forest (Fig. 2a and 2b). Meanwhile,
             Treehugger and Ocean of Air each focus on trees and on
             the scope and time frame of their biological processes. Al-
             though all the creatures represented in these projects share
             the same environments (i.e., the forest), they each have


PHILIPPE BÉDARD                           102                             AN-ICON
               their own Umwelt, which MLF represents through different
               densities of point clouds and different colour filters.
                             Some critics may point to the fact that what
               MLF does in their project may not be called hermeneutical,
               in that the tools they use do not translate the actual, literal
               perception of these insects and animals.26 It would also be
               fair to note that users would not be adequately equipped
               to interpret the world as perceived through these tools,
               even if their scientific accuracy was beyond reproach. This
               would be missing the point. It would be more appropriate
               to say that what MLF creates are artistic renditions of what
               the authors imagine the world might look like to different
               non-human animals. Their projects are best understood,
               then, as invitations to imaginatively explore what the Um-
               welt of a mosquito, dragonfly, frog, owl, or even a tree might
               be made of.
                             Recall that for Reinerth and Thon, different me-
               dia can effectively seek to simulate certain aspects of a sub-
               jective experience as perceived by a particular individual by
               appealing to different aesthetic or narrative strategies, as
               well as the imagination of the user (viewer, reader, player,
               etc.).27 What we have yet to explore, however, is whether
               VR is capable of simulating experiences that exceed the
               boundaries of the human body. And since, as Maurice Mer-
               leau-Ponty writes, “I am conscious of the world through
               the medium of my body,”28 how the body appears and
               functions in VR has far-reaching implications. So while what
               MLF (among other artists) creates might look different than
               how we see the world, the question still stands as to if and


      26 MLF typically collaborates with scientists in relevant fields to help them translate the
      data recorded. With that said, Pinotti’s reminder that data represented onscreen for human
      consumption is not equivalent to the source stimuli still holds true, lessening any claim these
      artistic experiences might want to make as to their accuracy. See Pinotti, “What is it like to be
      a hawk?”
      27 M.S. Reinerth, J.N. Thon, “Introduction,” in M.S. Reinerth, J.N. Thon, eds., Subjectivity
      Across Media: Interdisciplinary and Transmedial Perspectives: 1-25, 3. Original emphasis.
      28 M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge, 2010): 94-95.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                103                                          AN-ICON
              how might VR allow users to act differently than they can
              in their own human bodies.

                                Embodying the non-human

                             While the illusion of presence is often acknowl-
              edged in discussions of VR, the various kinds of embod-
              ied illusions the medium offers are just as relevant, readily
              achievable, and arguably even more fundamental.29 It is not
              surprising, then, that the body, its representations, and our
              perception thereof have received much attention from the
              fields of psychology and neuroscience, especially in recent
              years. For instance, in their work on the so-called “Proteus
              effect,” Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson have demonstrat-
              ed how “an individual’s behaviour conforms to their digital
              self-representation independent of how others perceive
              them.”30 While most scholarship that invokes this effect
              focuses on the behavioural aftereffects of inhabiting other
              kinds of human bodies (e.g., in terms of gender, age, race,
              ability, etc.), some have explored the effects derived from
              inhabiting non-human bodies.31 These lay the groundwork
              for the explorations to which this essay aspires, but it is
              possible to go further still.
                             A great many studies have been conducted on
              the topic of the “body ownership illusion,” or the so-called
             “body transfer illusion.” These illustrate how our body sche-
              ma is amenable to change when presented with sufficiently



      29 I use the term “medium” loosely here, as contemporary VR is more appropriately
      described as an apparatus which pre-existing media are attempting to adopt. For more on that
      debate, see my forthcoming “Many births of VR.”
      30 N. Yee, J.N. Bailenson, “The Proteus effect: the effect of transformed self-representation
      on behavior,” Human Communication Research 33, no. 3 (2007): 271-290, https://doi.
      org/10.1177/0093650208330254.
      31 See S.J. Ahn et al., “Experiencing nature. Embodying animals in immersive virtual
      environments increases inclusion of nature in self and involvement with nature,” Journal
      of Computer-Mediated Communication 21, no. 6 (2016): 399-419, https://doi.org/10.1111/
      jcc4.12173.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                               104                                        AN-ICON
               convincing data.32 Importantly, this adaptation also works
               in cases of illusion, when the brain is tricked into adopting
               external elements. This process can also be triggered in
               virtual reality applications. Starting from the now famous
               rubber hand illusion, studies have detailed different ways
               in which users can feel ownership of an artificial limb, such
               that they are deluded into thinking that this foreign object
               is part of their own body.33 Others have focussed on body
               transfer illusions, suggesting that even full-body stand-ins
               such as mannequins and digital avatars can be absorbed
               into a user’s body schema. VR is a particularly powerful
               tool for fostering this illusion since, as one notable paper
               suggests, “in VR, there are near-infinite opportunities for
               both extending and radically altering our virtual (and hence
               perceptually real) bodies.”34
                             The notion of “homuncular flexibility” further
               supports the idea that the mind can adapt to “exotic mor-
               phologies, distortions, extensions and reductions” of body


       32 See M.R. Lesur et al., “The plasticity of the bodily self: head movements in bodily illusions
       and their relation to Gallagher’s body image and body schema,” Constructivist Foundations
       14, no. 1 (2018): 94-105, https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-162795; S. Seinfeld et al., “User
       representations in human-computer interaction,” Human–Computer Interaction 36, no. 5-6
       (2021): 400-438, https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2020.1724790; A. Maselli, M. Slater, “The
       building blocks of the full body ownership illusion,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013):
       1-15, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00083; M. Botvinick, J. Cohen, “Rubber hands
      ‘feel’ touch that eyes see,” Nature 391, no. 6669 (1998): 756, https://doi.org/10.1038/35784;
       S. J. Ahn et al., “Experiencing nature. Embodying animals in immersive virtual environments
       increases inclusion of nature in self and involvement with nature;” N. Yee, J.N. Bailenson, “The
       difference between being and seeing: the relative contribution of self-perception and priming
       to behavioral changes via digital self-representation,” Media Psychology 12, no. 2 (2009):
       195-209, https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260902849943; H. Farmer, A. Tajadura-Jiménez, M.
       Tsakiris, “Beyond the colour of my skin: how skin colour affects the sense of body-ownership,”
       Consciousness and Cognition 21, no. 3 (2012): 1242-1256, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
       concog.2012.04.011; H. Farmer, L. Maister, M. Tsakiris, “Change my body, change my
       mind: the effects of illusory ownership of an outgroup hand on implicit attitudes toward that
       outgroup,” Frontiers in Psychology 4, no. 13 (2014), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.01016;
       H. Farmer, L. Maister, “Putting ourselves in another’s skin: using the plasticity of self-
       perception to enhance empathy and decrease prejudice,” Social Justice Research 30, no. 4
       (2017): 323-354, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-017-0294-1.
       33 M. Botvinick, J. Cohen, “Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see:” 756.
       34 W. Steptoe, A. Steed, M. Slater, “Human tails: ownership and control of extended
        humanoid avatars,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 19, no. 4
       (2013): 583-590, https://doi.org/10.1109/tvcg.2013.32. Notably, the authors also suggest that:
      “Our instinctive ability to rapidly and dexterously incorporate such objects and learn how to use
       such tools provides a clue to the remarkable plasticity of how the human brain represents the
       body and encodes space.”

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 105                                          AN-ICON
               configurations.35 It is interesting to note that already be-
               tween 1989 and 1991, ad hoc experiments were being
               conducted by VR pioneer Jaron Lanier and his team at VPL
               on an individual’s ability to take ownership of “weird ava-
               tars that were still usable.”36 Avatars with unusual point of
               view placements (e.g., eyes at hip level), extremely long ex-
               tremities, and even non-human avatars were experimented
               with.37 In the latter case, Lanier reminisces about a lobster
               avatar which was designed by Ann Lasko-Harvill, then
               Director of Product Design at VPL Research.38 Some of
               these informal experiments have since been proven by
               more robust studies. Notably, Andrea Stevenson Won and
               Jeremy Bailenson teamed up with and Jaron Lanier to test
               the ability of users to incorporate supernumerary limbs by
               mapping their controls to “the rotation of a wrist, the flex
               of an ankle, or some combination of the two.”39 This came
               as a response to the limitation of the human body in re-
               gard to the fact that, “[a]s the lobster body includes more
               limbs than a person, there were not enough parameters
               measured by the body suit to drive the lobster avatar in a
               one-to-one map.”40
                            An important limitation to the illusion of body
               ownership or transfer which studies on the topic often

       35 Ibid. See also A.S. Won et al., “Homuncular flexibility in virtual reality,” Journal of
       Computer-Mediated Communication 20, no. 3 (2015): 241-259, https://doi.org/10.1111/
       jcc4.12107; A.S. Won, J. Bailenson, J. Lanier, “Homuncular flexibility: the human ability to
       inhabit nonhuman avatars,” Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An
       Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource (2015): 1-16.
       36 Ibid.: 2.
       37 K. Kilteni et al., “Extending body space in immersive virtual reality: a very long arm
       illusion,” PloS one 7, no. 7 (2012): 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040867;
       S.J. Ahn et al., “Experiencing nature. Embodying animals in immersive virtual environments
       increases inclusion of nature in self and involvement with nature;” T. Feuchtner, J. Müller,
      “Extending the body for interaction with reality,” Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on
       Human Factors in Computing Systems (2017), https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025689.
       38 J. Lanier, “Homuncular flexibility,” in 2006: What is your Dangerous Idea? Edge: The World
       Question Center (2006), https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11182, accessed January 10,
       2023.
       39 A.S. Won et al., “Homuncular flexibility in virtual reality:” 242. Interestingly, the authors
       gesture towards our earlier discussion of “what it is like to be [ ]” when, in the very first line
       of their article, they ask: “What if you could become a bat.” Ibid.: 241.
       40 A.S. Won, J. Bailenson, J. Lanier, “Homuncular flexibility: the human ability to inhabit
       nonhuman avatars:” 2-3.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                  106                                           AN-ICON
              highlight is the required “realism” of the external object.
              That is, “the need for an object to preserve precise, informa-
              tive corporeal structural features in order to be integrable as
              one’s own body part.”41 In other words, anthropomorphism
              is often presented as an important–if not essential–factor in
              the illusion of body ownership. Does this mean the move
              beyond human perspectives for which I am advocating in
              this essay is a nonstarter?
                            Redemption for this idea might yet be found
              in more recent approaches to the illusion of body own-
              ership which point to a crucial element that is otherwise
              overlooked in the earlier quoted studies. Namely, in their
              meta-analysis of “user representations,” Sofía Seinfeld and
              colleagues have shown that while “[u]nrealistic visual ap-
              pearance, such as the visual discontinuity of the artificial
              body, also reduces the feeling of body ownership,” it is
              also true that “[b]ody ownership illusions are effectively in-
              duced through congruent multisensory stimulation.”42 Earli-
              er studies focussed on illusions generated by visual stimuli
              supplemented with synchronous tactile feedback (e.g., the
              rubber hand is stroked at the same time as the physical
              hand). Meanwhile, active engagement with the illusory body
              augmentation has been shown to play an important role
              in the success of this illusion. For instance, Marte Roel
              Lesur et al. suggest that while “the literature shows that
              not just any fake body or object can elicit illusory owner-
              ship,” at the same time, “in the presence of sensorimotor
              coherence, there are some examples of illusory ownership
              over implausible virtual bodies.”43 The redeeming quality of
              contemporary VR technologies in this regard is precisely
              their ability to afford their users agency, interactivity, and


      41 A. Maselli, M. Slater, “The building blocks of the full body ownership illusion:” 12.
      42 S. Seinfeld et al., “User representations in human-computer interaction:” 416-417.
      Emphasis added.
      43 M.R. Lesur et al., “The plasticity of the bodily self: head movements in bodily illusions and
      their relation to Gallagher’s body image and body schema:” 101

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                107                                          AN-ICON
             multisensory feedback which work in concert to create
             many of the contingencies that are known to facilitate such
             body ownership illusions.




                                                                   Fig. 3a




                                                                   Fig. 3b
             Fig. 3a and 3b. Non-human bodies in Plastisapiens
            (Miri Chekhanovich and Édith Jorisch, 2022). Credit:
                          National Film Board of Canada (2022)


                          True as it might be that most recent VR ex-
             periences remain tied to humanoid avatars, some have
             pushed the boundaries of what counts as realistic body,
             while others have experimented with bodies that are alto-
             gether non-human. One such notable example is the VR
             experience Plastisapiens (Miri Chekhanovich and Édith
             Jorisch, 2022), a piece of “surrealist ecofiction” which asks
             viewers to imagine a future where human evolution has
             been shaped by our exposure to microplastics in the air we

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                              108                             AN-ICON
              breathe, the water we drink, and the food we ingest; the An-
              thropocene has here been replaced by what we might call
              the Plasticene. Throughout its 15–minutes runtime, Plasti-
              sapiens asks its viewers to adopt a number of new bodies,
              from a prehistoric betentacled creature to the eponymous
              human-plastic hybrid, whose hands seem to be made of
              thin plastic (Fig. 3a and 3b). In both cases, “hands” are the
              only part of their body users can see, leaving the rest up
              to their imagination.
                            Meanwhile, hand tracking is used to manip-
              ulate these new alien-looking appendages. The player’s
              agency is made evident in their ability to move their hands
              in predictable ways. Here, part of the success for the body
              ownership illusion is ensured by the synchronous move-
              ment of the hand in physical reality and the appearance of
              the corresponding movement of the alien limb, as seen in
              the HMD. In my own experience of Plastisapiens, I had no
              issue whatsoever knowing how to manipulate my tentacles
              to successfully reach the objects in my vicinity, adapting to
              their limits and affordances within a matter of seconds. Fur-
              thermore, the experience employs haptic feedback through
              the controllers to add a sense of multisensory correspon-
              dence between what the eye registers the tentacle having
              touched, and what the physical (i.e., human) hand feels
              having touched as well. Agency, interactivity, and multi-
              sensory feedback therefore join forces to foster a sense of
              sensorimotor coherence, thereby facilitating the illusion of
              body ownership despite the lack of realism of the bodies
              on offer.44




      44 See also the oft-cited experience Birdly (Somniacs AG, 2015), another good example of
      agency and synchronous multisensory feedback contributing to successful illusory ownership
      of non-human animal bodies.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                              109                                        AN-ICON
                                 Conclusion

                            Fascinated as I am by the possibilities opened
               up by the idea of inhabiting non-human bodies, I can-
               not help but see the limitations of this kind of temporary
               foray into the world of non-human animals. If VR as it
               exists today struggles to make us see things from the
               perspective of another human being, as so many have
               already demonstrated, can it truly show us what it is like
               to be an animal, or any other non-human creature for that
               matter? Further limitations come up when we begin to
               question VR’s efficacy as an illusion. In a recent essay
               on the myth of total illusion in virtual reality, Janet Murray
               insists that, more than any medium before:

Interactive environments demand more explicit partnership
than just the willing suspension of disbelief; they become real
through the “active creation of belief” by inducing and satis-
fying specific intentional gestures of engagement. As soon as
we stop participating, because we are confused or bored or
uncomfortably stimulated, the illusion vanishes.45
                             Indeed, Murray is careful to remind us of a
               fact that is rarely highlighted in studies on illusions in VR,
               namely that effects such as the body ownership illusion
               are difficult to achieve and more difficult still to maintain.46
                             On one hand, I want to join Murray in insist-
               ing on the important role played by individual users in
               fostering the kinds of illusions for which I am advocat-
               ing in this essay. In an earlier paper on empathy in VR, I
               came to a conclusion that applies just as well to the idea

      45 J.H. Murray, “Virtual/reality: how to tell the difference,” Journal of Visual Culture 19, no. 1
      (2020): 11-27 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1470412920906253. Emphasis
      added. See also J.H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
      (1997) (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2017): 136-139.
      46 “The rubber/virtual hand experiment is truly delusional, but it is important to note that it is
      a fragile and momentary delusion.” Ibid.: 17.

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                 110                                            AN-ICON
               of imaginatively projecting oneself in the experience of
               non-human or non-living beings: “users must know how
               and want to use this tool.”47 The non-anthropocentric ef-
               fects which I describe in this essay are difficult to achieve
               for users who do not know how–or much less care–to
               use VR as a tool to explore spaces and bodies which
               exceed their natural capabilities. On the other hand, I
               also want to recognize that the very idea of optical illu-
               sion hinges upon the illusory nature of the phenomenon.
               This assumes the automatic and involuntary process by
               which we can succumb to illusions; optical or otherwise.
               When the necessary conditions are met, we cannot help
               but fall victim to illusions. Could VR’s affordances be
               used to such effect?
                            I am also keen on suggesting a fruitful ave-
               nue might lie in effects that are not quite illusions, but
               rather something we might call “games of perception,”
               or even hallucinations.48 Further research could be done
               in this regard to echo Crary’s work on subjective vision
               as it was utilized in the creation on optical toys in the
               18th and 19th centuries. To that effect, we should also
               consider the scholarship that has been produced on the
               revelatory potentials of optical technologies used in ways
               that defy anthropocentric concerns. I am thinking here of
               Stan Brakhage’s call for a radical exploration of cinema’s
               visual capabilities, as well as of William Wees’ study of
               experimental cinema’s ability to “exceed” the limitations
               of human vision.49 In both cases, nonnormative uses of
               a technology lead to drastic effects, as heretofore dom-
               inant modes of representation are swept aside in favour

       47 This essay is forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies.
       48 For more on illusions and hallucinations in VR, see C. Paolucci, “Perception, hallucination,
       virtual reality. From controlled hallucination to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard,” AN-ICON. Studies
       in Environmental Images, no. 1 (2022): 112-128, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/15443; P. Montani,
      “The hallucinatory aspect of virtual reality and the image as a ‘bilderschrift’,” AN-ICON. Studies
       in Environmental Images, no. 1 (2022): 154-172, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/15441.
       49 W.C. Wees, Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film
       (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

PHILIPPE BÉDARD                                  111                                          AN-ICON
             of more eccentric–or even excessive–ways of engaging
             with worldly phenomena. And while both examples re-
             late to cinema, there is no reason why VR should not be
             amenable to such experimental fancies. Where is VR’s
             Brakhage? Its surrealist or Dadaist movement? Its fear-
             less pioneers?




PHILIPPE BÉDARD                  112                         AN-ICON
AN-ICON has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No. 834033 AN-ICON.
The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” – Department of Excellence at the State University of Milan.



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