Picking up where his 1996 installation The Importance of the I 1 left off, Jason Wilson created The OuterBody Experience Lab in 2012. Its aim was to further explore, in a more interactive incarnation, the ways disembodied vision can impact our sense of self in the contexts of neuroscience, education, creativity, rehabilitation, and of course gaming. In a world that’s trying to understand the balance between the individual and the group, the self and the other, and the borders of ourselves, the Lab has had no shortage of territory to explore.
"One benefit of this maze format is that there is literally no salient touch data interfering with the visual input. When the visual input is relied on most heavily, and isn’t contradicted by other sensory information, there’s a higher chance of having the feeling of a classic out-of-body experience. That’s the origin of this work, designing a way to see what role the sense of sight has over the location of the sense of self, but from an art history perspective it was also concerned with why visual art was so much more widely lauded and revered as the highest form in western civilisation. If we can pull your sense of sight out of your body will your sense of self follow"
