Knowledge · Podcast
Six Psychonauts on VR, Psychedelics, & Consciousness Transformation
By Kent Bye
Six psychonauts explore how virtual reality and psychedelics may transform consciousness, touching on altered states, phenomenology, culture, philosophy, and technology.
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- Podcast19 podcasts in the bank
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- 2018Where it sits among everything in the Knowledge Bank, by year
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Summary
About the podcast
Crafting a useful framework for an industry as wildly diverse and constantly shifting as XR is challenging. However, an emerging tech industry which hews so closely to the multiplicity of human experience requires a working taxonomy to document it and serve as a guide to people new to the landscape.
A Working Map in Progress
Kent Bye has interviewed hundreds of people across the XR industry using the categories below to map the terrain. He gave a talk at SXSW in February of 2023 explaining his perspective. It is a perfect problem that can never be fully resolved and certainly not by any single person. Feedback and challenges are welcomed. It is offered as a springboard for conversation, rather than an end to it.
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Isness: Using Multi-Person VR to Design Peak Mystical Type Experiences Comparable to Psychedelics
This open-access CHI 2020 research article evaluates Isness, a multi-person VR journey in which participants experience their bodies as collective energetic essences. In a study of 57 participants using the MEQ30, reported mystical-type experiences were comparable to those in published high-dose psilocybin and LSD studies. The paper presents VR phenomenology as a possible route to connectedness, transcendence, and ineffability within a supportive setting; this is a comparison study, not evidence that VR pharmacologically reproduces psychedelics.
Invoking Psychedelic Embodiment Experiences in VR with Radix Motion’s “MEU” Asynchronous Communication Platform
Kent Bye’s XR taxonomy offers a working map of the diverse, evolving industry and a springboard for conversation, while acknowledging that no single framework can fully capture the range of human experiences.
Dreamseed VR - YouTube
Dreamseed VR is a YouTube channel created by Sarah Phinn in 2018, focusing on topics related to culture, philosophy, psychedelics, science, technology, and virtual reality. The channel can be accessed at the provided URL.
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