Virtual Reality (VR) provides a compelling platform for exploring embodiment, redefining sensory, cognitive, and interactive boundaries. Rooted in 4E cognition theories—embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended mind—this presentation examines how VR and immersive art transform our understanding of perception and agency (Varela et al. 1991; Gallagher 2005; Grau 2003). By situating the body and mind within immersive, responsive environments, VR art emphasizes the interplay between action, perception, and environmental interaction, offering new perspectives on cognitive and aesthetic experience.
Recent neuroscientific and interdisciplinary studies demonstrate how VR influences bodily perception and behavior, reshaping the boundaries of the self (Sanchez-Vives & Slater 2005; Kilteni et al. 2012). Immersive art installations extend these findings by creating multisensory environments that challenge users’ cognitive frameworks. For instance, projects like Be Another Lab’s “Body Swap” or Jacquelyn Ford Morie’s performative VR spaces explore the illusion of body ownership and its ethical, sensory, and emotional implications (Morie 2007). Such works enhance the embodied and enacted aspects of cognition and push the boundaries of social and artistic engagement in virtual spaces (Moura et al. 2021; McGowin et al. 2022).
Despite VR’s potential to exemplify 4E cognition principles, its academic exploration within immersive art remains limited. This presentation bridges that gap by linking VR art with embodied cognition, highlighting the ethical and epistemological implications of creating art in immersive, liminal spaces. Through VR, these artworks challenge traditional notions of selfhood, perception, and agency, fostering critical reflection on the evolving relationship between humanity and technology.
By connecting 4E cognition theories with VR art and neuroscientific findings, this analysis offers a framework for understanding how immersive technologies reshape human perception and experience, challenging us to rethink the limits of embodiment and cognition in an era of increasingly mediated realities.
Jelena Guga is a theorist of new media art and culture currently working as a research fellow and coordinator of the Digital Society Lab at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Interdisciplinary Activities, Research Center for New Technologies, University of West Bohemia (Plzen, Czech Republic) and a visiting researcher at the SPECS Lab at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). She explores the issues of identity, corporeality, agency, and perception in technologically mediated interactions and immersive environments through an interdisciplinary approach, combining art theory, (new) media theory, cultural studies, critical posthumanism, philosophy of mind, as well as dystopian science fiction narratives. She is also engaged in curatorial work at the intersection of art, science, and technology. She is the author of Digital Self: How We Became Binary and a number of academic articles in international publications.
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